


Strings

by sawyerslibrary



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon Disabled Character, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I love Matt Holt, Keith needs glasses, Lance is a lovable idiot, M/M, Matt just wanted his mum's peas again, Shiro didn't go to Kerberos, Who can afford a yungle in this economy?, everything is entirely different, hunk smash, i'm sorry chapter five is angst city, klance, slow klance, still very obviously there though, this started off as a 'one small thing' but now it's a full blown au, update lottery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2018-08-12 10:16:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 32,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7930885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sawyerslibrary/pseuds/sawyerslibrary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shiro never went to Kerberos due to a training accident that changed everything.</p><p>Matt is known to the Galra as 'the Champion', but now he's escaped their captivity he's free to become anybody he wants to. </p><p>Lance is falling in love with a boy with a mullet and he's 99.9% certain it isn't unrequited.</p><p>or action, slow burn romance and a whole lot of pining.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Origins

“So what you’re saying Pidge, in a roundabout way, is that you think aliens exist.” 

“I’m sure I already told you that I did. Anyway, it’s not a matter of what I believe. This message, ‘Voltron’, whatever it is, is coming from far out in the solar system, well away from Earth. Who else could be sending it?” Lance shook his head, sighing. This new kid was clearly delusional, and at this rate, Lance really couldn’t imagine bonding with him in any way, shape or form.

“You sure you didn’t like, hack some government agency by accident?” Hunk was looking at Pidge’s screen in confusion. “Galra sounds a whole lot like some kind of secret spy ring to me, and Voltron… what if it’s a weapon of mass destruction? A nuclear bomb?”

Lance rolled his eyes. “Calm down, Hunk. Now, can we follow my original plan, which didn’t include, may I add, forming conspiracy theories on cold rooftops? All I want is a pretty girl and something to make me forget that simulation.”

“You’re seventeen,” Pidge deadpanned, “you couldn’t even get alcohol if you made it yourself.”

“Then a nice capri-sun will just have to do, won’t it?” 

Pidge, thankfully, gave up his bizarre quest for the night, likely lured, Lance thought, by the promise of fruit juice and women. They waited in the barracks as he went to put his computer back in his room.

“Lance, can I ask you something? Do you honestly not believe in aliens?” Hunk actually looked shocked, and Lance looked sideways at him.

“Are you telling me you do? I thought you were brighter than that, pal, I have to say. If aliens existed, I’m sure they would be here by now. Have you met any?”

“No,” Hunk admitted, “but-“

“Then they’re not real! Now let’s keep quiet about the whole alien thing, or Pidge will start going on about Tron-whatever and the Kerberos mission again.” 

Eventually, Pidge emerged from his room, wearing a coat that looked a little too thick for the weather, and holding three silver cards, two of which he gave to Lance and Hunk.

“Sweet! I always wanted a credit card.”

“I think they’re to get us back into the Garrison, Lance. Look, it says access on it.”

“I saw that! I thought it meant, like, access to your bank.” Suddenly suspicious, Lance glanced at Pidge. “Where did you get these?”

Pidge pushed his glasses up, smiling slightly. “I may have stolen them from some guards. Don’t worry, I replaced them with fakes. They’ll never know, unless they get locked out.” Pidge’s smile expanded into a full blown evil grin.

“I like you, but I’m scared of you too. Is that normal?” 

“You’re scared of everything, Hunk. He’s a valuable member of the team. Let’s get out before anyone sees us!”

Hunk led the party out of the Garrison Academy building, stopping occasionally (to Lance’s infinite chagrin) to check for guards that he knew wouldn’t be there. As they walked, he explained how he’d tracked their movements.

“You know how there’s CCTV all around the place? It’s meant to monitor us, but I thought maybe if I could hack into it, I could monitor them too. It took a while, because I’m not exactly the best in the world at hacking camera’s, but now I have watch over the whole academy, and for a few days, I’ve been watching how the cycle of the guards works. Just in case Lance ever wanted to do something this stupid, you know.”

“Hey! I don’t see you guys protesting…”

“Shh!” They stopped, and a guard came round the corner, carrying a stun gun and a segmented satchel, containing, among other things Lance could see, a silver card. He wondered if that one worked, or if it was one of Pidge’s fakes.

“That’s awesome,” Pidge whispered. “I hacked the cameras too, of course, first thing I did when I got here, mainly so I could watch the meetings between the higher ups. I didn’t think of doing what you did, though. What software did you use?”

“It was a-“

“Blah, blah, blah, coding talk, but I can see the exit! Once we make it out of there, it’s only a mile to town… I can picture it already. Lance, you’re so handsome, how do you manage to be the best pilot at the academy while simultaneously upholding your looks to such a high standard?” Lance turned the other way, now playing himself. “Oh, I don’t know. I’m just amazing like that, babe. Want to feel my muscles?”

“Eww,” Pidge said, fake gagging. Hunk punched them both lightly.

“Guys, the guards are coming past again, shut up.” They waited behind a pillar as they watched the four tall, suited men walk past the door, seemingly having a conversation about the Simpsons, of all things.

“I’m just saying, Marge was hot.”

“And I’m saying, I’d rather have fucked Edna Krabappel while she stuck needles in my eyes. How can you be attracted to hair like that, Mitch? I really don’t get you sometimes.” The talk slowly became quieter with the guards’ steps as they continued down the long hall in front of the entrance to the Garrison. Lance tried to step out immediately, but Hunk held him back until all they could hear was their own breathing and the ticking of the clock in the dining room behind.

That was when they made their move- but before they could reach the tall, marbled door (which, Lance thought dully, really didn’t fit with the rest of the Garrison’s aesthetic), it shocked all three of the boys by creaking open. Next to Lance, Pidge stifled a shriek. They had just enough time to run back to the safety of the pillar before it opened fully, displaying a figure fully clothed in black who surveyed the hall quickly before hurrying to the left.

“…what the fuck,” said Pidge, as they watched the newcomer disappear.

“Was that…” Hunk’s sentence went unfinished. Him and Lance made eye contact, and Lance moved from behind the pillar, ready to follow.

“Wait,” said Pidge confusedly. “I really don’t understand. Who was that?”

“Keith,” said Lance bitterly. “My rival. He’s here to try reclaim his place as a training pilot, and push me back down to cargo. We’ll see about that!” With that, he ran off in the direction he’d seen the figure head, leaving Hunk and Pidge speechless.

“Oh man,” said Hunk, “we’re gonna have to follow him, aren’t we?” Pidge was incredulous.

“You do know they’re heading toward the Garrison command building?!”

“Yeah, but he’ll end up in trouble if we’re not there. Come on!” Pidge sighed, but they both followed Lance toward wherever Keith was headed. After a few seconds of hard running, they had caught up with him. Lance stood outside the door to the communications room, peeking in through the keyhole. Inside, Keith (and it definitely WAS Keith, he’s recognise that mullet anywhere) was pressing random buttons, seemingly frustrated.

“Come on,” he muttered. “This has to work.” Finally, he seemed to press the right one, and a compartment opened up. Smiling slightly, Keith got something out of his pocket and prepared to place it inside.

“What’s he doing in there,” Hunk asked, trying to push Lance out of the way to see through the keyhole.

“He’s doing something to the computers. Probably trying to register himself as a student again. Like the commanders aren’t going to notice THAT.”

Keith closed the compartment, and immediately the computer screen started flashing, undecipherable text appearing all over the screen. “What the…” That was when the alarm went off.

“Um, guys,” said Pidge. “I can hear the guards running toward us. How do we explain this?”

“Hey, it was Keith, not us. We can just explain how we were suspicious of what he was doing, so we followed him. They’ll think we’re great, maybe even move us up a grade. Plus, Keith will finally get what’s coming to him.”

“No he won’t,” Hunk was saying, looking through the keyhole.

“…huh?” Lance, with strength he didn’t know he had, shoved Hunk out of the way. “He’s jumping out the window?! What a coward! He is not getting away with this!” Before the others could stop him, Lance had opened the door and was running toward Keith’s makeshift exit.

“No, Lance!” Hunk looked done. “Pidge, you’ll stay with me and explain, right?”

“Do you want to get expelled? Anyway, that Keith guy could know something about the Kerberos mission. I know it’s a long shot, but I am not missing the chance to question him about it.” And then Pidge had jumped out the window too, leaving Hunk with a decision. Stay within the safe walls of the Garrison, or squeeze through the window and confront a potentially dangerous Keith.

Sometimes he wondered why he was such a good person.

-*-

A hundred metres away from the headquarters, and dangerously close to the detection of the guards, Keith ran, knowing that he had to get away, that Shiro had to know what he had found. If he got captured by the Garrison, he’d have to tell them instead- but somewhere, inside, he knew that they already knew. If a seventeen-year-old boy with no ability or experience with computers could decipher an alien message, then surely the commanders could too. It sickened him that they hadn’t told anybody.

His hover board was hidden around another five hundred metres away, behind a particularly large tree he had spotted while out scouting earlier. Another minute of running and he’d be there, and then he’d be safe. He didn’t want to think of what would happen if he didn’t make it.

Behind him, he could hear running, and he knew that it had to be the guards. Putting all the energy he could into it, Keith sped up, but so did his pursuers. Keith could see his board now, but worse, he could hear the panting of whoever was following him, and he was running out of breath. Come on Keith, he thought.  
You’re so close, three more strides and you’ll be there- and then suddenly, a dead weight pounced on him, and he was brought to the ground, groaning at the impact.

“Aha! I caught him, Pidge! Finally convinced I’m better, Keith?” Frankly, Keith had no idea what was happening. The boy who had spoken sounded young, maybe his age, and was still sat on top of him. 

“Let me go! You don’t understand how important what I’m doing is!”

On top of him, the boy chuckled. “Would the Garrison understand? Because that’s where I’m taking you back to!”

“Cut it out, Lance. We can’t go back now, and you know it.” The other speaker, Pidge, was crouching in front of Keith. “What do you know? Is it about the Kerberos mission? Did you find out what happened?” He looked hopeful.

“Why do you people care about that? Who are you?” Suddenly, the weight was off of Keith, and he stood up, finding himself facing someone vaguely familiar.  
“Who am I? Surely you haven’t forgotten. Keith and Lance, sworn enemies, deadly rivals?”

Keith squinted at him, trying to remember. “Lance… Mcclain? The cargo pilot? …I never even spoke to you.” Lance rolled his eyes in a way that said but you know who I am, but Keith ignored him. These two were going to get him caught. “Who cares, anyway. I have things to do. I’m leaving.”

“No you’re not!” Lance tried to pounce on him again, but Keith was quick, and dodged the attack by feinting away. The other boy, Pidge, had gone straight for his hover board, and was messing around with the controls. Just when Keith reached it, ready to throw Pidge off, it flew suddenly into the air, and connected with his chin. He didn’t even feel himself hit the floor.

-*-

“Pidge! You killed him!” 

“What do you mean I killed him?” Pidge looked over the side of the hover board. “Oh, hey Hunk!”

Panting, Hunk was walking the final few steps to where they stood. “Never… make me run that far… again!”

“It was less than a kilometre. You really need to work on your fitness.” Pidge was distracted again by the board. “Guys! There’s lasers on this thing!”

“Bring it down and let me see!”

“…guys! Pidge murdered my arch nemesis! How do we punish him from trying to get me off of the programme now?!” Lance shed a theatrical tear. “You could have at least let me kill him!”

On the floor of the clearing they were in, shadowed by a large oak tree, lay Keith. Hunk noticed, with a relief that spread through him immediately, that despite being unconscious, he still seemed to be breathing. Still, this was a problem.

“What did you do to him, Pidge? I thought you just wanted to question him!” Pidge had seen it too, and seemed shocked.

“I didn’t do anything! It must have been Lance.”

“Hey, don’t blame me! I saw it happen. You pressed some weird button, and that… thing you’re on went up really fast and hit him in the face.”

“Ouch…” said Hunk, wincing. “So what are we doing? Waiting until he wakes up to question him? Because if we wait any longer, we’re going to get caught by the Garrison soldiers.”

“So? Why can’t we? Won’t they like that we’ve caught the person who broke into their computer room and stole information? I honestly don’t see the problem.” Pidge listened to Lance, and then sighed.

“The problem is, what he’s wearing.” Having seemingly mastered the controls of the hover board, he flew down and parked next to where Keith sprawled, unmoving. “My dad used to wear this when he went hunting. To the human eye, it looks black, but to anyone else- including cameras- this stuff practically makes you invisible. It can blend into anything. Much better than khaki.”

“So he’s got a fancy suit. It’s not going to work when the Garrison get here, and actually see him.”

Hunk thought he could see where Pidge was going with this. “They’ll see him unconscious. Like we’ve attacked him and laid the blame on him for something we did.” Pidge nodded.

“Lance, when they play the security tapes back, all they’re going to see is us. In the control room. When we’re not meant to be. They know information has been stolen, and think we know things we’re not meant to. The truth is, they’ve probably already been through this entire situation- the guards have most likely been told to shoot us on sight.”

Lance was processing this now. “Shit. I hate Keith.”

“Lance, you’re a pilot. Can’t you fly us out of here on that thing?” When Hunk was worried, he had bad ideas. This was probably the worst one yet- Lance was the worst pilot he had ever met, and, even on a craft flown by a professional, Hunk really didn’t have the stomach for flying. “Actually, maybe not. We could walk.”

“Thankfully, we don’t have to walk anywhere, or let Lance fly. This thing has autopilot.”

“That sounds marginally preferable,” Hunk shrugged. Lance walked onto the hover board, glaring at the screen suspiciously.

“I bet it’s set to take us to Keith’s secret lair. The controls look simple, anyway. A baby could fly this!”

“Nope,” said Hunk and Pidge at the same time. Pouting, Lance helped Hunk drag Keith on to the board. To start, the screen would only accept a hand print. Without hesitating, Pidge grabbed Keith’s right hand and pressed on an appropriately shaped pad. The board took flight so fast that they all almost fell off. Hunk only held on by holding on to Lance, who in turn was holding on to Pidge. When poor Keith nearly slipped, Hunk grabbed him too.

“It’s taking us toward the desert,” shouted Pidge over the sound of the engines. He was right, Hunk saw, somehow repressing his urge to throw up- the landscape was growing more and more barren as they moved away from the urban area the Garrison was located within. Hunk wondered whether this was where Keith lived, after he’d been kicked out of pilot training. If he did, it must be lonely- Hunk couldn’t see a town in any direction he looked in, now.

“Hey, this button says it makes you go faster!”

“Don’t press it Lance!” Out of the corner of his eye, Hunk saw that Lance was about to, but thankfully they seemed to be slowing down as they came toward a shack in the middle of the sand dunes. The hover board’s engines began to cut out as they descended, and they managed to stand normally again. Next to Hunk, Lance shivered.

“I have a really bad feeling about this…”

“Wuss,” said Pidge, and jumped off the board before it hit the ground, looking at their surroundings. As soon as he felt he could walk again, Hunk got off too, and immediately puked.

“Disgusting,” admonished Lance, shaking his head. “Who votes we leave Keith here and go somewhere nice on his hover board? Like New York. Or Hollywood!” 

Nobody listened to him. Hunk wiped his mouth and went to pick up Keith, who was thankfully, fairly light.

“We should at least wait until he wakes up, so we can ask what he was doing.” At the shack, Pidge knocked on the door. There was no answer.

“That’s creepy,” said Lance.

“It just means there’s nobody in,” Pidge corrected, and pushed open the door, which seemed to be unlocked. “See, nothing to worry about! It’s all good!”

Hunk froze when he saw the figure behind his friend. “Uh, Pidge?” Pidge’s eyes widened as he felt the knife at his throat. Lance immediately drew out a similar sized knife from Keith’s pocket, and Hunk held up a stun gun he had taken from the Garrison.

“Give me my brother,” the figure said, “or I’ll kill you all.” With that, he pulled the knife across Pidge’s throat.


	2. Revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is the chapter where we get to see what matt's doing! hint: he's being badass (please ignore my made up galran words.)

All hell broke loose. When he saw the figure’s hand move, Hunk shot the stun gun. Pidge moved backwards and ducked down, missing the knife’s icy surface and shocking his captor, just as the dart drove its way into the man’s skin. Not wanting to miss a chance to get pay back on this guy who’d just attempted to kill his friend, and worried the stun dart wouldn’t be enough, Lance ran right up to the entrance and punched him straight in the face.

The figure fell to the floor, yanking the dart out as he went. 

Lance held out Keith’s blade as Pidge, shaking slightly, snatched up the one the figure had dropped as he’d fell. Close up, Lance could see that the guy was mid-twenties, and Asian, like Keith. A scar ran horizontally across his nose, and he was missing more than half of his right arm. 

“Who are you,” Lance demanded. Behind him, Hunk watched Keith begin to wake up, and wearily pointed the stun gun toward him.

“Takashi Shirogane.” 

“That’s great,” said Lance, “nice name. Now listen. Your ‘brother’ was unconscious, and we were bringing him home. When you saw us doing that, where did you find an excuse to try kill us?!”

“Takashi Shirogane.” Pidge’s eyes lit up with recognition. “You’re the pilot who didn’t make it onto the Kerberos mission! The one who’s ship malfunctioned in training.”

The man looked up sharply. “Where did you hear about me?”

“It was… uh. On the news,” Pidge said quietly. Thankfully, nobody seemed to notice his pause. “What do you know about the mission? If you know something, you have to tell us!”

“…or what?” From behind Pidge and Lance, Keith sat up weakly. The two glanced back at him, and then toward Takashi again, stuck for what to do.

Hunk breathed in, closed his eyes. “Or we’ll make you tell us,” he said, reluctantly but firmly. “We’ve got the power here, right Lance?”

“As long as it stays like this, we have! You, Takashi guy, have you got any weapons on you? Lay them on the ground.” He turned to Keith. “Same to you, loser. If you’ve got knives, you better get them out!” Lance was smiling now, trying to play it cool, but Pidge could tell he was still scared. Nothing like this had ever happened to any of them before.

“I’m going to go scout inside, see if they’ve got anything in there,” he said. “You can handle this guy, Lance, right?”

“Of course I can,” Lance said, as if it were a stupid question. Walking past him, Pidge went in, and was completely awestruck. The shack had a pretty ordinary interior, and looked kind of cosy- but then there were the pictures displayed across the walls, interconnected with strings, carvings in cave walls and mountain sides. A few notes were written around each relationship, as if trying to place its significance. Pidge traced the trail with his fingers, reading theories like ‘blue lion?’ and ‘alien energies?’ along the way. When he’d cleared the shack, he knew he had to ask about this.

It took a while to check every crevice downstairs, and when he had finished he double checked. Pidge found pistols, daggers, and, among other strange weapons, a sharp-edged boomerang. “These guys sure value their protection,” he muttered, as he placed them all in his bag. 

On a surface in the kitchen, there was a photograph, showing a young Keith, and what looked like the failed pilot he lived with smiling; around age eighteen. Keith was in Takashi’s arms, desperately trying to wriggle free. The badge he wore stated ‘I’m 10 today!’.

Despite himself, Pidge smiled. It was good to know that these two were just normal guys, really. Maybe they could just forget about what had happened and make a deal with them, work together. 

With that thought, he walked back outside, only to see just how unlikely that would be.

“What was it you said… Finally convinced I’m better than you?” Lance moaned. Keith sat on top of him, fists held up ready to fight if Lance moved. Somehow, Takashi now had the stun gun, and Hunk was sprawled across the floor, his body packed full of darts. Pidge sighed.

“Are you all idiots? I thought you guys said you could handle this!”

“Keith was challenging my masculinity! He said I couldn’t beat him in a fight…”

“I was right!”

“Hey! I got a good few hits in, and you know it! I bet your face is hurting so bad right now.”

“It’s not, actually.”

“Shut up!” Pidge fired a gun into the air, a real one that he’d found under one of the cushions in the living room. The force of it shocked him, and his glasses nearly fell off, but he composed himself quickly. “We need to work together! I saw your pictures. Whatever it is you’re looking for, me and Hunk can help- the energies your following? We could probably track those with our machinery. We all just need to calm down a second and stop attacking each other!”

There was a pause, as everyone thought over the proposal, and saw, since Pidge had a loaded gun, that there was really no other option.

“Are you okay with them coming into the house, Shiro?” Pidge glanced at the man, hoping, praying that the answer was yes. 

Finally, after what seemed like an infinite amount of consideration, Shiro nodded.

-*-

“After getting booted from the Garrison, I was kind of lost and found myself drawn out to this place. It's like something, some… energy, was telling me to search. Shiro’s practically my brother, and we were looking for anything that could explain how the crew of the Kerberos mission went missing, so we both moved out here together.”

“What are you looking for?” asked Hunk, skimming through Pidge’s diary as he spoke. Thankfully, Pidge seemed to engrossed in the discussion to notice.

“Well, I didn't really know at the time until I stumbled across this area.” Keith pointed to a photograph on the board- a series of what looked like mountains, bunched together. “It's an outcropping of giant boulders with caves covered in these ancient markings. Each tells a slightly different story about a blue lion.” He gestured to another scene, this one obviously taken from inside a cave. The carvings inside seemed to be glowing an eerie shade of blue.

“Okay,” said Lance. “You’ve found some caves, and some stories about… a blue lion, was it? Can I just ask- what does this have anything at all to do with the Kerberos mission?”

Keith looked across at Shiro, and then down at the floor, seemingly frustrated. “We don’t know. We still don’t know.”

“I’ve told you so many times. This is a waste, Keith. They crashed, and they did it because I wasn’t there. They’re dead.” When Shiro spoke up, everyone looked round at him, silent. Pidge was shocked. 

“I know we’ve just met, Shiro, but even if they did crash… nobody blames you, okay?” For a moment, him and Shiro locked eyes, and Pidge saw something like understanding or recognition flash in them. He gulped, and hoped that didn’t mean what he thought it meant. “Anyway, there’s no evidence anywhere that says they’re dead.”

“I don’t know, Pidge…” started Hunk.

“They’ve been gone for a year, man. They’re probably not coming back.” Lance smiled apologetically, sounding like he didn’t want to believe what he was saying himself. Of course, it was the truth, most likely. Who gets lost in space and then comes back fine? It had never happened before, and it probably wasn’t going to happen now.

The room was silent for a long time, until Keith spoke up, mumbling and still staring at the floor. “They’re not dead.”

“Not this again. I know you don’t want me to face the facts, I know you pity me, but-“

“I’m telling the truth. Earlier, when I bugged the Garrison computers, I found a message from a Galra fleet.”

“Galra!” Hunk jumped up.

“Isn’t that who Pidge intercepted that message from? About Voltron or whatever? …oh dammit, he’s gonna start talking about aliens again now.”

Pidge ignored Lance. “What did it say?”

“They’re holding them for ransom. They want twenty million yungles, whatever that means. The message said that until the fee had been paid, they would put both the prisoners in the ring to fight as gladiators.” Keith was struggling to speak, only just keeping his cool. “I saw the date it had been sent… it was a year old. The Garrison still haven’t paid.”

“Let me get this straight. Aliens have the Holt family in captivity, the Garrison know about these aliens, and aliens exist?”

“Aliens exist. Yes.”

“I feel like you missed the point,” said Hunk.

Shiro stood up. “I need to go convince the Garrison to pay this ransom fee. If they don’t listen to me… then I guess I’ll have to pay it myself.”

“Have you got a big box of yungles just lying around? Because I don’t.” Lance opened his pockets. “Look! Yungleless!”

“It could be equivalent to like, four U.S. dollars, potentially,” Pidge mused, trying to work his way around this problem, looking for a solution. “We could… talk to these Galra? Message them back from the Garrison computers!”

“I don’t think you can negotiate with the kind of guys who make people fight to the death, Pidge. I… actually may have a better idea?” 

“Your ideas are shit,” Lance dismissed, and Hunk punched him.

“I read Pidge’s diary-“

“-You WHAT?-“

“-for research reasons, of course!” That was a lie, if Hunk was honest. The truth was, he was looking for a candy bar in Pidge’s bag when he found it. “Anyway, I noticed the repeating series of numbers the aliens were broadcasting in that message about Voltron looks a lot like a Fraunhofer line.”

“Frown who?” Lance looked puzzled, like he always did when Hunk went and started talking about all this scientific stuff.

“It's a number describing the emission spectrum of an element, only this element doesn't exist on Earth.”

“So what is it?” asked Keith.

“I have no clue, but its wavelength looks a whole lot like the boulders in that picture of yours.”

“Give me that!” Keith tore Hunk’s sketch of the wave out of Pidge’s diary and held it up to the boulders. “Okay, I admit, it does.”

“My guess is that it’s your energy- likely ‘Voltron’. With the information we have, I can build a machine to find the source that’s outputting it. Whatever’s there, Galra wants it- and we can use it to pay the ransom.”

“Hunk, you big gassy genius!”

-*-

Matt Holt had finally escaped. 

Over a year, he had gained the trust of the Galra, until they treated him like one of them. Within a month of him becoming the Champion, they moved him into unlocked rooms and gave him free reign of the ship. By his fifth month of captivity, he was friends with all the guards, and played chess with Zarkon on Thursdays. By the seventh month, he had been out more than three times in a small ship they had gifted him, and by the ninth he had been trusted to lead an entire week long mission.

Still, he felt it wasn’t safe, and still he bided his time. Until tonight. For the first time in fifteen Galran thonks (apparently, slightly longer than two years), there had been an uprising in a planet in their empire.

Matt, trusted Champion and friend of the emperor, had been left to care for the ill and weak on the mothership while it was settled. And now, in his state of the art Galra engineered ship, he was already one hundred light years closer to Earth.

Smiling slightly, he thought of Katie. How would she react when she saw him again, after all this time? He’d missed her. He hoped she hadn’t spent too much time searching for him, instead of studying. When he got home, he was going to get their mum to cook his favourite meal, just like old times. Then, maybe, him and Katie could go onto the roof and look at the stars. With her, he could pretend that there was still something good up here.

Relaxing now, knowing that the radar showed no fleets following him, Matt thought maybe he could lay his head against the seat and sleep, just for a second. He never got much sleep anymore; he could start claiming back his freedom by replenishing his energy. 

It must have been low, because when he woke up, he was in the orbit of Earth- and out of fuel. The ship beeped ceaselessly, the Galran words for ‘tank is empty’ appearing on his monitor. Panicked, he checked the back-up fuel tank, and seeing that was empty too, hoped in vain that he was at the perfect speed that his ship would just act as a satellite until he could contact the Garrison to come collect him.

No such luck.

The ship was going too fast, circling round and round, faster and faster, and getting dangerously closer to the Earth’s surface. There was no other option: it was going to crash.

Matt cursed the engineer who had decided that this one model of craft didn’t need a parachute-equipped ejector seat. He’d have to jump out, and time it perfectly. On the monitor, numbers were diminishing quickly.

Five miles until he hit the ground. Four. Three. Two.

One.

Then he jumped, and hoped he hadn’t gone too fast, or left it until late. He fell for a short distance, oddly content with the feeling that it brought and the close contact of the wind, and then the impact hit him, pain exploding in his right shoulder. For a while, he just stayed on the ground, breathing through the agony, and mentally checking for any other damage.

When it had registered as minimal, he sat up, and let his eyes adjust to the comparable darkness of Earth. That was when he heard the ship hit. The sound came from beneath Matt, oddly. This became clearer when he saw where he was, and shuddered at his luck: a rooftop, on a city skyline.

Clutching his shoulder, he walked over to the edge, and peered at the panic below. To his relief, the ship hadn’t hit anything important. It had landed on a small grassy area near a runway for an airport. Swarms of people already gathered round it, waiting as if expecting for an alien to come out. The sign on the airport read: Madrid-Barajas. So he was in Spain. And, thankfully, very near the airport.

Maybe, Matt thought, I can get home before anyone even realises it was me in the ship. The last thing he wanted, having just got home, was a big fuss and news channels and magazine interviews. He needed his family.

Walking back to the middle of the roof, he opened a door onto stairs that he hoped led to the bottom, and began a descent down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> matt is back! will he get home before pidge goes off to space, though? ;))))


	3. A Glimpse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> lance and the other paladins uncover the blue lion- but what will they do with it?

Keith and Shiro led the way toward the massive rocks, with Hunk, Pidge and Lance lagging behind, still, despite the calmer atmosphere now, slightly wary of their companions. Shiro didn’t blame them; what could he expect, when he’d tried to slit one of their throats? It had been the sight of Keith, unmoving, that had driven him over the edge. He hadn’t even waited until he’d processed the situation before acting. That was what he was like, he trusted his gut over his brain- he’d had to, as a pilot. Now he wasn’t, all it did was got him in dangerous situations.

There was no excuse for what he had done. All he could do what try make up for his mistake. Nodding to Keith, he dropped back.

“It’s Pidge, right?” First, the boy looked shocked. Then he forced a smile.

“Yeah, it is. I never asked, can I call you Shiro? Or is that just a thing Keith does?” 

“If you want, I guess. Most people do. Or did.” Suddenly Shiro remembered Matt, and their last goodbye before he’d gone to Kerberos. He hadn’t called him Shiro then. He hadn’t called him anything, a one-word farewell was all he got, all he deserved. Gulping, he hurried through his apology. “I just wanted to say, I’m really sorry for earlier, when I- well, you know.”

“Attempted murder?” This Lance was quickly becoming the exact sort of person Shiro wanted to push off of a cliff, and there were a lot of them around here. The annoying thing was, he was right.

“It’s okay,” said Pidge, glaring at Lance. “I entirely understand. I broke into your house after nearly killing your brother. You were right to think you were in danger.” To Shiro’s surprise, Pidge actually shrugged, as if this was something that happened to him all the time. “I forgive you.”

Shiro didn’t know what to say. Thankfully, he didn’t have to. 

“I’m getting a reading,” noticed Hunk, holding up his Geiger counter, or whatever he had said it was. Abruptly, they all changed direction, weaving through two boulders, Hunk and Pidge running ahead into one of the many caves.

“There’s lots of those lion carvings in here,” observed Lance, and traced one with his finger. “This is creepy. I think I can almost feel those energies you were talking about…”

“I can’t,” said Hunk.

“Me neither.”

“Or me.”

“Keith, you can, right?”

“Not this time, sorry.” One carving was fully covered by dust, and Lance brushed it off with his hand, pulling back when suddenly the whole cave interior lit up blue, the source of the light clearly the carvings. Abruptly, the floor started to rumble beneath them.

“They’ve never done that before!” A note of worry was in Keith’s voice, and Shiro felt it too. They came to these caves almost every day, what was different now?  
Suddenly, the ground caved in completely, and the whole group fell through, into whatever was below. That turned out to be a whole lot of water. Shiro lay stunned for a second, wet and aching from the fall. Ahead of him, he saw Lance be the first to get up, and look into the eyes of-

“-the blue lion!”

Slowly, everyone got up.

“Is this it?” Pidge asked, unsure. “Is this… the Voltron?” Seemingly overheating now, he took off the big coat he was wearing, tucking it into his backpack.

“It must be,” Shiro heard himself say.

“This is what’s been causing all this crazy energy out here.” Keith walked toward it. “This is what we can use to pay for the Holts’ freedom! …there seems to be a force field around it.” Annoyed, Keith reached out, trying to break through.

“Does anyone else get the feeling this is staring at them?” Lance was moving from side to side, staring the giant robot in the eyes. Shiro took a moment to look at it. It really was on a new scale, as large as any building he’d seen in his life, bigger than a ship even, and formed from shimmering blue metal. In a fight, it would pack one hell of a punch. It wasn’t hard to believe an alien empire would want it. When he looked into its eyes though, all he saw was a mechanical glare.

“No.”

“Yeah,” Lance was saying, ignoring him. “The eyes are totally following me.”

“I wonder how we get through this,” said Keith, and Lance ran forward, seemingly pulled by something.

“Maybe we just have to knock?” Keith looked at Lance as if to say, that’s a ridiculous idea, but the other boy was already attempting it. At Lance’s first touch, the force field dissipated, and floor glowed for about a minute. Shiro braced himself for another ‘falling through the floor into a small river’ moment, but it never came, and eventually both the glowing and the shaking stopped. All the while, the others stared straight forward, as if watching something he couldn’t.

“Woah,” they all said together.

“Um, did everyone just see that?” Lance was in awe.

“I didn’t,” said Shiro. “What was it?”

“Voltron is a robot. Voltron is a huge, huge, awesome robot!”

“And this thing is only one part of it! I wonder where the rest of them are.” Pidge and Hunk carried on talking like he hadn’t spoken, but Keith looked at him.

“Shiro? You didn’t see that?”

“I… no. It’s part of something bigger?”

“Yes! It’s just a small part of Voltron, which is like, this giant humanoid robot with cannons and stuff! We need to find all the parts, bring it together!” Lance was already running toward its slowly opening mouth, as if to get in. “She’s calling me. I swear.”

“I don’t hear it. Also, I didn’t see any cannons?”

“Use your imagination, Hunk. All the coolest robots have cannons. I… I think she WANTS me.”

“Wait. Stop a second, aren’t we getting carried away with ourselves? Surely, this one part is all we need to pay the ransom. That is what we’re doing this for.” If Shiro was confused about being the only one not to see, well, whatever they’d seen, he was even more confused about how they were acting. “We don’t have time to hunt for pieces of some robotic puzzle. With every second that passes, there’s more chance that Matt and Sam are dead.” He paused to look at each of them, eyes settling on Pidge. “Surely you know that.”

Keith nodded. “Shiro’s right. However fascinating that glimpse of Voltron was, our main goal is to free the prisoners. We need to fly this thing straight to the Galra.”

Pidge breathed out. “Yeah. We do.”

“You too, Pidge?” Lance looked sad, and not with his usual comic approximation of the feeling. 

“I’m sorry, Lance. It’s not my choice, it’s just what we need to do.”

Lance reluctantly nodded, walking away from them, and into the lion. They followed him, feeling slightly guilty. As soon as he sat in the pilot’s seat, it moved forward, placing him closer to the controls. 

“Okay, guys, I feel the need to point it out, just so that we're all aware. We are in some kind of futuristic alien cat head right now-” Hunk was clearly about to set out some safety rules, but Lance interrupted, a little dazed, before he could finish.

“Did you guys hear that? I think she’s talking to me… purring.” Lance gulped, face etched in worry. “What we’re about to do feels so wrong… I don’t know if I can just hand her to someone like that.”

“You’ve known her for ten minutes,” said Keith. For once, Lance just glared at him, and didn’t say anything. Keith had the decency to look away.

Eyes shut, Lance said: “do you know where the Galra keep their prisoners, blue?” Shiro tried to imagine this robot talking to him, and found he couldn’t. Hesitantly, Lance pressed a series of buttons on the screen. “…this should take us to them.”

“Thank you, Lance.” Shiro had barely finished his sentence when the lion suddenly shot up, breaking through layers of rock as if they were Styrofoam. After nearly hitting the ground several times, the ship picked up speed, and begin an ascent at breakneck speed. He only stayed upright by holding onto Keith; they almost knocked heads at the first jolt, and both shouted to keep the lion steadier. Pidge and Hunk were both holding onto Lance’s hair, and screaming.  
Lance himself seemed perfectly comfortable in the pilot’s seat.

“You are the worst pilot ever!” Keith had his eyes shut as he shouted, as if he couldn’t even bear to look. Then they were on the ground again, the lion galloping across the sand.

“Isn’t this awesome?!”

“Make it stop. Make it stop!”

“Quit messing around!”

“It’s not me. You saw what I keyed in!” And then they were jumping up into the air again, a great deal of momentum behind them. They sped up quickly, and Hunk got more and more green with every second.

“Don’t be sick, Hunk! The Galra really won’t like that.” Pidge had balanced himself now, against a window. “Just breathe in and out!” 

“What else would I do? I always breathe!” The whole ship rolled their eyes.

“Blue really doesn’t want you puking in her, Hunk.”

“What did it say? Doesn’t it like me?” Hunk stroked an interior wall of the lion gently. “There there. If you were a just a little less bumpy, I promise I wouldn’t even think about throwing up!”

“She didn’t say that. Well, she didn’t say anything. It’s more like images in my mind, you know? Like earlier!” 

“Are we even in space yet?” asked Keith impatiently. Him and Shiro had found, after a while, that it was much easier to stay upright when they held onto Lance’s seat, and now he was squinting to try see out of the windows. Outside, it was dark, and it was hard to tell whether they were still in Earth’s atmosphere. Shiro couldn’t see any other planets yet, though.

“You do that a lot,” noted Lance. Keith made a noise that sounded a lot like a question, only half listening and still looking intently. “Squint. Do you have poor eyesight?”

“What. No!”

“Why don’t you ever wear your glasses, Keith? It must be so much easier when you wear them.” Over the years, Shiro had watched his brother’s eyesight get worse and worse. Two years ago, he’d forced him to go to an eye exam, the conclusion being that yes, his vision was definitely lacking. Personally, Shiro thought Keith had looked alright in his glasses.

“Oh my God.” The lion nearly crashed as Lance glanced around at Keith, trying to imagine it. Hunk was looking at him too, but with something more akin to wonder.

“How the hell did you pass your exams at the Garrison?!” 

Keith crossed his arms and looked away. “With instinct and determination,” he cried dramatically. Then, he focused on the window again, fighting to keep his eyes open wide this time. “Just leave me alone.”

“Hey,” said Pidge, nudging Lance. “I think we’re here!”

They were approaching a ship, one larger than Shiro had ever seen before, purple and cut at sharp angles.

“Yeah. That’s it.” Lance was shaking. “Guys, she’s begging me not to do it. They’re going to use her to destroy other planets and claim them. People are going to die, millions of them. She’s a weapon of peace, not of massacre.”

“A weapon is a weapon. Destruction is what this thing was made for. Someone was going to find it eventually.” No matter what this thing was being used for, it would still kill people, Shiro thought. The truth was that war was a fiction. Each side was told a lie that they were righteous; in the end, both were as bad as each other. Giving this weapon to the Galra would be no different to giving it to one of their inhabited planets. 

“Deciding who dies shouldn’t be our choice. If we give this to them, we’re giving a death sentence to the next people they invade!”

“Do you know who we sentence to death if we don’t give it to them? Sam and Matt Holt. Would you rather save members of Earth, of the Garrison, or some non-sentient aliens you don’t know? You choose, Hunk.”

The ship went dead quiet. In front of Shiro, previously unshaken by Lance’s argument, Pidge seemed torn. Mentally, Shiro begged him to see things his way. Keith was looking at the floor, guiltily.

“I can’t,” whispered Lance, biting his lip. Then he repeated himself, louder this time. “I can’t!” His hand slammed down on a button, and what looked like a laser gun instantly fired from the lion, cutting in half one of the wings of the Galra ship. 

“What are you doing?!” Keith stood wide eyed and watched as Lance made what was probably the single greatest mistake of his life. Shiro couldn’t believe what he was seeing, and trying to stop it, slammed into Lance, falling onto the pilot’s chair as he went.

Underneath him, Lance struggled to keep control of the lasers. Shiro elbowed him in the face, looking through the controls and reaching with great desperation back to his pilot training. Obviously, he knew which one the steering wheel was, but this wasn’t human technology, and beyond that he was stuck. Would the ship even respond to him?

The answer was yes. There was a great struggle, considering that he only had one arm, and the ship hated him (he knew what Lance had meant now, constant images were running through his head, death everywhere), but he managed to steer the lion toward what looked like a docking spot. By then, he was evading Hunk’s attacks from above as well as Lance’s underneath. Thankfully, for the most part, he had Keith to deal with Hunk, but his attacks seemed half hearted and troubled. Pidge still just stood there, as if stuck on the edge of some great decision. 

Shiro landed the lion, Lance yelling at him all the while. Immediately, armed guards gathered round, extremely tall and purple skinned. 

“So this is what aliens look like,” gulped Keith, holding Hunk’s hands behind his back.

“You traitors! I can’t believe we trusted you, this is all wrong, do you hear me?!” Lance was in hysterics, no longer trying to fight back, just still. “This isn’t the way to do it, you monsters. I don’t know about him, but I thought you were better than this, Keith.”

“You don’t know me, then.”

Pidge finally seemed to have snapped out of it. “We can still leave. They don’t treat humans well. What if they lock us up, too?”

“Katie, think about your family. This is the only chance we have to save them.” Pidge was quiet again.

“Katie?” Hunk looked confused. Shiro found the button that opened the door of the vehicle, and pushed it. Outside, they could begin to hear the soldiers talk. The language wasn’t something that would ever be heard on Earth- it was too sharp, and every so often they could make out a growl or a hiss. Visibly, Keith shuddered.

“We can talk about it later, Hunk,” said Pidge, not looking him in the eye. “That is, if we live.”

Then the Galran troops took the ship, and everyone, even Shiro, regretted the decision he had made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shiro hates the world but loves his friends, keith needs glasses, and pidge's real identity is on the verge of being uncovered!   
> the next chapter is going to be a matt chapter, i think. who feels like a car chase in madrid?


	4. A Short City Break

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> matt is back on earth, and trying to find a way to get back to america when america finds him

Zara was empty when Matt tentatively made his way in, and he breathed out a sigh of relief. The whole airport had been near empty, after what had been dubbed a terrorist scare- at least, Matt thought it had, with his elementary grasp of Spanish: ‘bomba’ did sound a whole lot like bomb, and this had been what people were yelling as they ran out. Unsurprisingly, because of this, he’d managed to make his way through baggage check and security without encountering one member of staff.

Not for the first time, he hoped nobody had died when the ship fell. If they had, he’d never be able to forgive himself. He shivered, imagining children playing on a field, and a shadow that got larger and larger until it was replaced by one hundred tonnes of metal. In he breathed, and out again.

This was why he couldn’t be caught. This was why he had to be quick, before they realised it wasn’t a bomb scare at all. Even if he hadn’t killed anyone, he had crashed an alien ship into Earth, which was most likely a criminal offense in itself. Mentally spurring himself on, he grabbed the nearest clothes that looked about his size, and rushed to the changing rooms, where there would be no cameras watching.

Right now, he looked like a crazy looter in an astronaut’s outfit, but if the scars underneath the clothing were caught on camera, he’d probably seem more suspicious. Matt tried not to look in the mirror as he changed, at the gallery of marks and burns and alien innovation that was his body, but found himself failing.

Over his year in captivity, he had grown a lot taller, and a lot more muscular- a result, of course, of the endless ring fights and tournaments he had been subjected too. His hair was longer, almost halfway down his back, giving him an almost feral appearance that was enforced by the look in his eye. A caged animal, he thought, scowling. Matt was still bitter about how they’d treated him, but even more about how he’d had to please them with his every action. Every time he had dined with the emperor or killed another prisoner in the fighting pit, he had questioned his resolve. Sometimes it had seemed to him he’d never escape, that he didn’t have the willpower. Even having done so, he still felt as if something had been broken inside of him.

On the outside, he had certainly been affected by his time with the Galra empire, the most noticeable change being his left eye. In his first fight, where he became the champion, he had lost an eye and gained a long scar when his opponent had made to slash at his face with a knife. When he’d beaten all the odds and won, the Galra had replaced it with something that didn’t look like an eye at all. It was made of cold iron, hexagonal with a point of red light in the middle, and sat on top of the place where he used to have an eyelid. Matt despised it, but it worked. He couldn’t say that for some parts of his body- his right pinky finger had been almost severed in a fight against an Arusian, and now was completely useless. His right leg held no feeling after a bite he had suffered from a creature that looked half a dog and half a bird. The rest of his skin was dotted with scars here and there, some that now, when he looked back, Matt couldn’t even remember getting.

One day, he’d take revenge for what they had done to him, he swore, then and there, looking in that mirror. 

Then he moved on, discarding his Galran pilot uniform in another shop’s bin and then taking a match to it that he found on a shelf. As soon as he dropped it, the whole thing burst into flames, and Matt tasted the sweet fumes that rose to greet him. In English class at high school, he’d always hated metaphors, but maybe this one meant more than any he’d heard before. Turning, Matt prepared to leave the airport.

He was free.

At least, until he heard the airport security behind him.

“Ladrón! Acabe y ven aqui!” Shocked, he turned around. Behind him were two men, both with guns, held ready to shoot. Although he didn’t know what they were saying, he didn’t think it was anything good. 

Matt ran.

Gunshots hit the floor at his feet, echoing off the walls around him as he raced to find cover. As they passed the perfume counter, he ducked behind a shelf, and heard dozens of bottles explode as the men struggled to change direction with him. Then he was heading through a sporting emporium, squeezing through narrow tunnels of puffed winter coats and piles stacked high with heavy hiking boots. The latter he brought down as he passed, hoping to slow the men pursuing him. 

He looked back as he ran to see them jumping over the boxes effortlessly, and muttered a curse to himself. Obviously, Spain liked its security guards to be in top physical condition.

When he could see the terminals, he knew he was running out of time. Matt had to make a choice- run to a plane and hope the pilot had left his keys in (was that even how planes worked? Matt had only ever flown a ship) or turn around and confront these guys as they ran at him, shooting.

There seemed only one viable option.

Utilising the element of surprise, he suddenly span round, running at them and attempting to dodge their bullets. It wasn’t hard- one of them was reloading, hands shaking. The other was one of the poorest shots Matt had ever seen. He took that one down first, yanking his gun out of his hands and hitting him over the head with it. There wasn’t even time to watch him fall to the ground before the other guard was yelling at him and punching him in the back.

Matt grunted and turned to face him, bringing his knee up to meet the man’s chin. Immediately, his pupils shot up, leaving only the whites of his eyes, and he dropped to his knees. Matt dropped the gun he had been holding.

Now the CCTV would definitely be showing him as more than a thief, Matt thought with a slight panic. He had to get out of here, but now he knew that he couldn’t do it by plane- there were no pilots around, no flights leaving the airport, no way to fly out a plane himself. It was impossible. There was only maybe one way he could think of to get out of here, and that relied on several variables. There was, he thought, no harm in checking.

-*-

There were cars on the runway. 

Abandoned, too, Matt thought, letting himself smile. In front of him were four Chevrolet sport cars, all of them yellow, and, remarkably, not marked with any symbol to say they were owned by the airport. Even better, the car furthest to the left had the driver’s door open wide- and the keys in the ignition. It was Matt’s lucky day.

All I need to do, he thought, is get out of here, ditch the car, and call home. If he called his mum to come get him, he was sure she’d be on the next plane to Spain, as soon as they started running again. Maybe she would even bring Katie, or Shiro. No, he couldn’t think about Shiro. His friend probably still hated him for not taking him on the Kerberos mission. Matt was glad he hadn’t come; he could have been in Matt’s situation now. Ducking into the car, he shivered at the thought.

Quickly, Matt looked around to make sure the place was still empty, and when he was satisfied it was, he turned the key and closed the door. It took him a while to think about how to drive. After a year, he was sloppy and slow, but as he drove round the terminal and through an open gate, he gradually got the hang of it. Once he got on the motorway, he could make toward the next big city with an airport. For now, all he had to do was make sure he was going as fast as possible.  
This could be easy, would be easy.

As he drove out, past the car parks and the front entrance, he saw a van drive past, some kind of military bomb squad. They didn’t even look at him- he was just another disappointed holiday maker leaving now that his flight had been cancelled. Eventually, after what seemed like a century of slow, careful driving, he hit the motorway, and sped up.

Valencia, he thought, reading a road sign. He was sure he’d heard of it before, and thought it would be big enough to have an international airport. Although he wasn’t sure about the geography of Spain, it couldn’t be more than a few hours’ drive away, and on the way he’d drive through plenty of towns where he could stop and ask to use someone’s phone, ditch the car and hitchhike the rest of the way there. At the first turning, though, there was a queue, one that looked miles long.

It was while he was stuck in the jam that he first noticed that the car behind him had an American number plate.

At first glance, Matt dismissed it as a coincidence, but when the jam broke and he kept on driving, he observed that this car continued to take the same turnings as him. Even when he went off the track for a minute, heading toward a town named Tarrancón before re-joining the motorway, it followed him, moving into every lane one pace behind.

There was no doubt about it- Matt was being tailed. 

They must have been alerted by the security guards in the airport, saw him leave on tape and followed. Whatever they wanted, he wasn’t going to let them catch up with him, not when he was this close to getting back to his family.

With a sudden spark of madness, he took a left and began to circle back to Madrid. If Matt could lose them in the city, he thought, then he could make his break for it. 

Preparing to conduct his plan, he sped up to just above the speed limit. In the distance, he could see the city start to grow, until it seemed to be all around him, larger, he thought, than any town he’d visited in his home state, the previous limit of his Earth travel. Hell, he thought, maybe even bigger than his county. If there was a place where he could shake a car, then it was probably here. In his rear mirror, the driver of the car seemed to be speaking into some kind of machine. Praying they weren’t requesting back up, he entered the city. 

All around him were libraries, arches, statues. To the left of him, he saw a group of young children in Real Madrid football shirts, to his right a five-star hotel and a Michelin rated restaurant. Adrenalin dropping, Matt was only just realising how sweltering hot it was here, how bright. Above was a sky of liquid blue, and not a cloud to be seen. The sun shone on everything, but Matt didn’t have the time to gape at it. He was coming up to a traffic light at a crossroads, the first one he’d seen it, and, holding his breath, he watched it flicker to red.

This was his chance.

Matt made to slow down, watching the car behind him copy… and then suddenly, in only a way a sports car can, the vehicle sped up again, and, half closing his eyes, Matt sped through the lights to the other side of the road.

He let out a breath when he made it across with only the honking protest of cars, and looked again behind, feeling even more confident when he saw that his tail still remained stuck while cars crossed before it. After another minute of driving, he turned down a side street, trying to find another route to the road he’d been on before.

Suddenly, there were two of them in front of him. Four people dressed in black and holding guns stood directly before the cars, barring his way past. They didn’t fire, but still Matt ducked as he put the gear into reverse and slammed the pedal, sending him backwards. The impact as the car slammed into a wall reverberated through him, but he took control again and span it round, trying to escape the side street.

Before him was the car that had been chasing him before, its driver sat smugly observing him. Matt breathed in and out slowly. 

They had caught him. He was going to Spanish prison, likely to never see his family again, named a terrorist and a thief. Unless, of course, he could get out of this.

Matt couldn’t see a way, and he stepped out of the car. Still, no shots were fired, but the two of the four who had been blocking his way ran toward him and grabbed his arms. He felt handcuffs, cold against his wrists, cutting when he heard the click of the lock.

The two marched him toward the first car and opened the door. Through the tears that clouded his vision, he noted that these people didn’t much look like the police. Although they plainly wore uniforms, they were tight and pitch black, and the guns they carried were pistols, not the kind he’d seen on the security guards at the airport, that he assumed were common in Spain. There was also the fact, and he couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed it earlier, that they didn’t look Spanish. Matt could be described as ginger, and his skin was pale to a new level, but when he compared the skin tone of his hand to one of his captors, there really wasn’t much difference.

The person driving the car turned around. Matt saw she was female, maybe in her forties, and sported dark sunglasses. A grin laced her lips.

“Aren’t you something?” Matt shivered at her words. There was a pit in his stomach that was just seeming to get deeper and deeper. Soon it was going to plummet through his skin. There was equipment all around him, computers and cameras and tracking devices. As the door was closed and locked, he felt trapped, yet again.

“Who are you?”

The woman reached out a hand and touched his face, and Matt froze.

“Someone with a lot of power.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> who is this mysterious car woman? you're not going to find out until at least another chapter  
> (if my spanish is wrong, please correct me, when i went to madrid i managed to say 'her' in the middle of a spanish sentence. i died)


	5. Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> meanwhile, away from madrid and in space...  
> (if anyone actually reads this then I AM SORRY FOR NOT UPDATING i was too busy i apologise)

“I spy with my little eye, something beginning with p.” 

“Is it prison again?”

“Close.”

“Prisoners?”

“Yeah. It’s prisoners.” 

Keith slipped further down the wall he’d made his bed for most of the night, listening as Lance traced a carving in the wall with his forefinger. As he moved slightly, Lance audibly winced, and Keith closed his eyes, trying to block it out. After a while, he pulled himself up and walked over to the door. In the corner of his vision, he could see Lance’s gaze follow him tiredly, as he hammered on the iron bars and shouted.

“Let us out! Do you hear me? My friend is hurt, we’re starving!”

“Twenty,” noted Lance, who had a watch and had been counting the hours since they were first locked in here.

Not a single Galran soldier walked past, nor had they since Keith had woken up. 

“If you don’t take us back to my brother, he’ll come here and kill you all!”

“Will he,” Lance said quietly, and Keith stopped pounding the bars to take a deep breath in, “or will we be stuck here forever?”

“That’s ridiculous. We’re going to be fine.” They had had this conversation at least three times before, but now the note in Lance’s voice worried Keith. “You’re going to be fine. All we need to do is break out, okay?”

“That’ll be easy, when I have a bullet in my leg.” Keith chewed his lip. That was the entire problem. That, and the fact that these bars were fortified with alien steel that, however many times he slammed his body against, didn’t seem to dent. The cell was dark, and in twenty hours Keith’s eyes hadn’t adjusted to see much, but he had to assume that the injury to Lance’s leg was bad. Once, in flight school, Keith remembered, Lance had crashed a cargo ship and walked out cheering, only to find all his ribs were broken. The guy was tough, but the hole in his leg had reduced him to a whimpering mess.

Keith remembered the chain of events like it had happened seconds ago, not yesterday. Their lion had been boarded by the Galra, and they had been escorted out onto the ship. As they left, Keith looked at Shiro, whose face, he saw, was clouded with determination and doubt. Lance, Hunk and Pidge were all silent as they faced the aliens.

Aliens.

For some reason, it hadn’t registered in Keith’s head until then that that was who they were going to meet. Now, put before them, he felt like him and Shiro had made the wrong choice. The Galra were tall, towering creatures, with legs so long that even Shiro was dwarfed when he stood with them. Blue, thick skin covered their bodies, and they walked as though they owned the galaxy. Which, Keith supposed, they probably did. There was something in the curve of their mouths or the lines in their face that betrayed harshness, and suddenly there was an atmosphere of uncertainty.

Inexplicably, a thought came to Keith’s head, one he’d heard somewhere before: these aren’t the kind of people you reasoned with. Why hadn’t they listened to Hunk and Lance?

“Shiro-“ Keith started, but was promptly cut off.

“-this ship is in exchange for Sam and Matt Holt. Are you listening? This should be enough to pay their ransom.” Shiro’s eyes were fire.

An alien soldier circled the lion, inspecting it, while another roamed about inside. Close to Keith, Lance shook with something that might have been rage or fear, and Hunk glared at the tallest Galran. An answer came from behind in the form of a large alien with something that looked like a gun replacing one of his arms.  
“You’re right. This is enough to pay the fee we requested.” Pidge’s eyes widened.

“So you’ll release them? Now?” 

Keith knew something was wrong when he heard the draw of a gun. From somewhere far away, he heard a muffled affirmation, but he was already whizzing around to confront the alien behind him. Fist connected with pointed teeth. In its hand, the alien clutched handcuffs.

“It’s a trap,” Keith shouted, and ducked an attack from another soldier a second early. As soon as he was able, he broke out from between the group and ran after the others, back toward the blue lion and their escape.

Only when he had regained his breath enough to count his friends did he realise that Lance wasn’t running.

Immediately, Keith turned back. Lance was on the floor, being hit repeatedly by a soldier as he struggled to get a punch in. Keith jumped and extended out his leg, sending the alien flying when his foot connected with its chest. He bent down and offered a hand to Lance, who took it gratefully. Then, just as they were both stood up and ready to make for the lion again, he was grabbed from behind and went crashing to the floor.

Shots aimed at him from every direction, and Keith shielded his face with his arms in vain. 

“Keith. Come on!” 

Keith opened eyes that he hadn’t even known had shut.

Not a single bullet hit.

Quickly, he got up, but only to find that they were surrounded by soldiers, all with guns. Dull engines began to rev up, and when he looked over Keith could see that the blue lion was ascending slowly, dodging all attempts of the Galra to stop it. Although he felt a pang of abandonment hit, he hoped that they didn’t try to rescue them. This way was better.

What wasn’t good was the pool of blood forming next to Lance as he sat on the floor. 

“You idiot!”

“You were going to get hit if I didn’t block it.” Lance smiled weakly. “Also, you were crouched down, so it would have gone through, like, your heart or something. Really, what you should be saying is thank you.”

“Idiot,” he repeated, but there was no time to argue. Looking around, he saw no way out of this situation, but at the back of his mind there was something telling him to keep trying- some kind of buzz, or energy. As he watched the blue lion fly out of the ship, he held firm onto hope. 

Again, a guard approached him with handcuffs, and this time he knew resisting capture would be futile. Despite this, it was the last thing he wanted, and reflexes and panic made him sidestep the soldier as he came. Pain exploded in his head, and for a while he was insensible.

Later, Lance told him that they were somewhere deep in the cellars of the ship, and that, as of yet, no rescue had come. Keith was thankful for that- he wanted Shiro far away from here and out of danger, a feeling he had experienced so many times since his brother’s accident. Anyway, back then, he had thought that he had the situation in control, that the buzz he had heard earlier was the key.

From down here, though, he couldn’t even hear a trace of it.

“We’ll figure something out. Get some rest.”

“I can’t sleep,” Lance muttered tiredly. “It hurts.”

“Have you tried?”

“Yeah.”

Keith felt a pang of guilt. If he hadn’t been so stupid as to get himself caught in a situation like that, Lance wouldn’t be hurt. This was entirely his fault. Despite this, though, he wondered why Lance had taken that bullet for him- he had a right to hate Keith, after he had helped Shiro deliver his lion to the Galra, and them to a cold, dark prison. Maybe he’s crazy, Keith thought. Crazy, and ridiculously brave.

“Try harder,” he muttered eventually, repressing his thoughts and turning away from Lance.

“…you know Keith, you are the opposite of helpful.”

“Well maybe if you weren’t such a wim-“

A key turned, and metal dragged along the floor as the barred door was pushed open. Shooting up, Keith inspected the newcomers with a mix of apprehension and curiosity. It was two aliens that entered, the opposite of each other in height and stature. One Galran was towering and stalk-like, dressed in something resembled drawings in history books back on Earth. Covering his chest was a hot pink doublet, and he wore trousers (breeches, Keith thought they were called) ending just below the knee, and woven with some kind of thick wool. The alien’s partner was short and mostly made up of rolls of fat. She wore a tight fitting, almost see-through shirt, and trousers that surpassed her feet and dragged across the floor as she walked. If this pair would have looked ridiculous as humans, they looked even more bizarre as aliens.

It was plain to see, though, that they were not soldiers, or anything like them. This, Keith thought, is what a powerful Galran looks like; one that doesn’t need to fight in order to be worthy to live. Who they were, and what they were here for, he didn’t want to think about. 

Maybe, though, they wouldn’t be expecting an attack.

“Let us go!” 

Keith screamed as he ran toward them, throwing his fist at the shorter alien and anticipating the feeling of knuckles against soft cheek. Instead, he was met with resistance- the alien woman caught his hand and, with strength he hadn’t been expecting, twisted. Keith hit the floor and clutched his wrist, biting back a scream. When he tried to get up, he was kicked in the stomach, and he desperately gasped for air.

“Stop!” shouted Lance. Somehow, he had pushed himself up against a wall, his injured leg raised slightly above the ground. As Keith was yanked up and his head slammed into a wall, he saw Lance try to put weight on his leg through stars that suddenly exploded in his vision. Far away, Lance cried out.

“These two aren’t ready for the gladiator pits, I don’t think,” mused the taller one, stroking a short beard. “We will have to train them up.”

“We’re not… fighting anyone… brother’s going to kill you,” Keith managed to get out, but he could barely formulate sentences in his brain, let alone on his tongue. The short alien still held him against the wall, and he heard her laugh loudly into his ear.

“Your brother left on that lion that you brought us. Until we get it back, you will be fighting for your life in the pits every day. That is, until you die.”

“You aliens,” Lance said, and faked a smile, as Keith was starting to find he did when in danger. “Always with the gladiator fighting pits. Why can’t we have a different fight, like a food fight?” Lance’s eyes narrowed. “Or one where we get guns and you don’t?”

“Cute,” quipped the short one, tilting her head and looking into Keith’s eyes. “His pupils have gone all weird. Should I fetch a medic?”

“No, there will be no point in wasting resources. Both of them will die eventually, but one will die tonight.” A shiver ran through Keith’s body at the words, and he felt the last of his hope die. 

“I hope it’s Keith,” shrugged Lance, but it seemed like the aliens weren’t talking anymore.

Suddenly, soldiers filled the room, and both boys were grabbed, gasping and struggling, and carried out like some kind of packages. Keith found that the Galran who held him had a grip so strong he couldn’t move, and so he reluctantly stayed still and tried to make the dizziness go away as they were marched down a cylindrical corridor with a high ceiling. Something at the back of his mind told him they were moving on a downward slope, but his eyes couldn’t tell. 

Then they really were descending, entering a spiral staircase that seemed to go on for eternity and only served to make Keith even more nauseous. There was a constant throbbing in his wrist and a pounding in his head, probably the product of three concussions in two days, and now this jolting that was produced every time his handler dropped to another stair. By the time they were on another floor, well below the last one, Keith could barely notice it.

Their destination turned out to be a cell much like the last, the only noticeable difference being that it was slighting smaller. Quickly and unceremoniously, they were discarded on the floor, and the door was shut and bolted.

Keith found the lack of movement refreshing, and shut his eyes.

“Keith, are you okay? Keith?” Lance was shaking him. “Please don’t leave me here alone.” Keith pushed him away with his good hand, cracking open an eyelid begrudgingly. 

“I’m not dying. Probably. Feel like shit though.” At his words, Lance breathed a sigh of relief that seemed to last a century, but then his eyes widened as he looked past Keith and into the light behind him. 

“Oh God. They really are going to make us fight.” With what remained of his strength, Keith shifted to look in the same direction.

The cell, it turned out, had two sets of doors, opening out different ways. While the other opened onto the foot of the staircase, this one opened onto a much less enclosed space: a circular platform, lit with bright, high bulbs and surrounded by the kind of seating you’d see in a circus, or an old theatre. Strewed across the floor of the dais were bodies, hundreds of them, some piled up; a few were in pools of new blood, but most sat in dry, as the skin slowly peeled from their skeletons, and their smell drifted away from them. Some were just children, and others old men, all of different alien species. In death, they looked much the same.

Directly across from the cell he and Lance were in, Keith thought he could see another. And another, and another, in all directions.

It didn’t take long for him to realise where they were.

‘One will die tonight,’ one of those aliens had said, and, with sudden clarity, Keith thought he knew exactly who. In the middle of the field of bodies were two weapons, stained with blood and years of use. 

One was a machine gun, loaded with magazines, or, at least, the alien equivalent of them, and one was a small, blunted knife. One stood a chance, and one didn’t.

The first was labelled ‘Lance’, and the other ‘Keith’.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rip keith lmao
> 
> joking lance won't kill him... right?


	6. Turning Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is dedicated to everyone who has actually read any part of this fanfic. thank you so much, you're all great, especially you eleanor.
> 
> now who's ready for allura

Hunk ran into the lion and bent over, trying to catch his breath. In front of him, Pidge frantically pushed buttons while Shiro waved and shouted, calling to Keith and Lance to hurry up.

“Oh no,” whispered Hunk.

“They’ll be fine,” comforted Pidge, still trying to figure out the controls of the ship. “They’re just fighting aliens.”

“Is that meant to make me feel better?”

“Come on,” said Pidge, “it’s Keith,” but there was a worrying tone to that phrase that made Hunk think that maybe Pidge was trying to convince himself of it. 

Yelling could be heard all around outside, but none of it human. It seemed that when the Galra dropped all pretences and prepared to attack instead of trick, they spoke in their own language. Hunk tried to see through the crowds of approaching aliens and spot his friends, but he couldn’t see anybody who wasn’t tall and blue.

“I can’t see them,” said Shiro, eyes widening as he spoke the words Hunk had been trying not to think. “They… they’ve just disappeared. I can’t believe it; Keith was right behind me. Keith! Lance!” Hunk observed how Shiro’s knuckles whitened as he clutched the edge of the doorway, and thought he could feel the blood rush out of his own skin. This situation was impossible.

Outside, the Galra were assembling drones. One hovered directly above them, and the first shot it fired only narrowly missed, grazing the material of the lowered entrance. Underneath Hunk, the whole lion shook at the force of the laser, and Pidge nearly lost his (or her? Hunk wasn’t sure anymore) footing. Hunk and Shiro fell back into the lion, Hunk catching himself just in time before his head would have slammed against the floor.

To the left, soldiers were marching toward them, but to the right there they already stood, poised ready like one of the ship’s own walls. 

This couldn’t be where Hunk lost his best friend. 

Not here.  
“I don’t know how this thing works,” yelled Pidge over the sound of more fire. “If I could just get it to start, we could spot Lance and Keith from above!”

“Isn’t there anything here we could use to get to them?” Hunk peered under a surface, looking for anything he could use to get through the soldiers, but to no avail.

“We can’t- “ Pidge stopped mid-sentence. “My backpack! There’s a gun in it, from before!” Thanking their luck, Hunk went to grab it, but Shiro was already there, unzipping the bag and pulling out Pidge’s coat to find the pistol under it. Quickly, he turned the safety off, checking how many rounds were left as he did so.

“Listen to me. You two are staying here. If I don’t get out, leave. Give me five minutes.” 

“You can’t go out there alone, you’ll die-“

“-don’t argue, Katie. Stay. Here.”

With that brief speech, he walked toward the doorway, and made to step out, but just then, the entire lion shook, and the door slammed back up, sending Shiro flying backwards and into the opposite wall. 

The lion was ascending.

“Pidge, what did you do?!”

“I haven’t pressed anything, I swear!”

Panicking, Hunk threw his weight against the door, but found it wouldn’t open no matter how much he tried.

“Lance! Keith! We have to save them, we can’t leave!”

“There’s nothing I can do, it’s the lion moving itself!” Pidge joined Hunk in his efforts. Through the window at the front of the ship, the Galra fortress was slowly disappearing below them. Hunk felt his heart drop in his chest, horrified at what had happened. What if the Galra killed Lance? What would he do?

“Lion, get back down there!” Running over to the control system, he began to press all the buttons he could, but the lion wasn’t responding. “Why are you doing this? You have to save Lance!” Nothing happened, and the more time that passed, the further they were moving away, well into space now. Finally, angry and in disbelief, he punched the display. Behind him, Pidge placed a hand on his shaking shoulder.

“We’ll go back for them. We need to get out of here, but we’re not leaving them forever. Okay, Hunk?” With Pidge’s words, the rage left Hunk, leaving him with only shock.

“Yeah. Okay. We’ll do that.”

“We can’t.” Hunk glanced back to see Shiro stood behind the pilot’s chair, blood pouring down his face from a gash in his head. “We have to go back right now. They’re not staying there.”

“Are you alri-“ Hunk began, but Pidge was walking round to Shiro, a determination in her eyes that he had never seen before.

“Listen, Shiro. It was your fault that we even ended up there in the first place- Lance and Hunk tried to stop you, but you insisted despite their gut instincts. You were wrong about taking us there, and you’re wrong about taking us back now. There is no way we can fight that many drones, not with one small ship like this. So would you just sit down, shut up, and maybe try to think of a way we could get backup?”

The man was speechless, his mouth opening and closing as he struggled to find an argument to combat that with. Eventually, he just did as she said and sat down in silence.

Hunk was still scared of Pidge, he concluded, even if she wasn’t called that at all. To be honest, though, he still had some questions about that.

“So,” he started, “you’re called Katie?” Pidge seemed mildly shocked that he’d thought to ask her about that just then.

“Well. Yeah… uh, I’m Katie Holt. I’m related to Sam and Matt Holt who went on the Kerberos mission… Sorry for tricking you all into thinking I was a boy.”

“It’s fine,” dismissed Hunk mildly. Pidge’s family could have been on that ship, he thought to himself, playing with his bandana. It must have taken a whole lot of mental strength to not just turn away from Lance and Keith, but from the possibility of finding them too. Thinking about it, he supposed she’d waited long enough that another day or two would only seem like a short amount of time- at least compared to the year she’d already been through without them. 

Somehow, Hunk was even sadder than before.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you looked at it), he didn’t have time to be sad for long. The sudden scraping of metal was the first thing that alerted them to something being amiss. Then there was another sound, louder, and the lion was weaving about, dodging invisible obstacles. With a start, Hunk realised they were being targeted from behind. Pidge had realised too.

“They’re coming after us!”

Suddenly, they accelerated, and Hunk held onto the pilot’s seat as his hair flew out behind him. They were still dodging hits, only quicker now, but they weren’t sending any attacks back as far as he could see. Now in the pilot seat, Pidge was craning her neck to look above them. When she spoke, her voice shook in awe.  
“Is that a wormhole?” 

“Wormholes don’t exist,” said Shiro, but there was something like wonder in his eyes. Hunk stared into the unknown, startled by just how scared he felt. When he had signed up to be a student at the Garrison, he had thought of space as an adventure, as the next challenge. Now, it just seemed too big for anyone to comprehend, and certainly too dangerous.

All three watched it warily, waiting for the lion to fly to the side and past. Slow seconds passed, and still they approached it, the Galra ships gaining behind them.  
“You guys don’t think we’re heading toward that, right?”

“No,” dismissed Pidge. “We can’t be.” Light from the mass reflected off her glasses.

“We’ll move,” assured Shiro.

Yet they didn’t, and there it was, looming closer and closer, and uncertainty was flashing through Hunk’s brain with a tinge that felt a little like nausea. Shiro had been right. Wormholes couldn’t exist, they were going to be dragged in, their bodies inverted, their eyes pulled out of their sockets by pure pressure.

Then they were there, and Hunk was screaming, and Pidge was closing her eyes, Shiro desperately making a last minute grab at the controls to try to turn them away, around, to anywhere but here.

“THAT’S IT WE’RE DEAD IT’S THE END THIS IS WHERE WE TAKE OUR FINAL-“ Hunk paused to breathe, looking at the sight that was all of a sudden before him- “…breaths.” 

They weren’t dead. That was the first thing. The second was that the wormhole was gone, and here was more space, but now, for some reason, there were no Galra. A new appearance greeted them instead, a planet that looked something like Earth, blue and white and spherical, perhaps maybe not as large. It seemed to be where they were headed.

“We went through the wormhole!” Cheering, Pidge threw her arms in the air.

“That’s not a good thing,” complained Shiro. “We’re light years away from Keith and Lance, maybe hundreds.”

“At least we’re not being chased anymore,” Hunk reminded him, but he was still feeling guilty. Knowing there were more important things, he shook that guilt away for a second, concentrating on the positives. “…maybe on this planet we can get some answers.”

“If we could form Voltron, we could easily destroy an entire fleet of the Galra. Hopefully, the other lions will be here.”

“What do we do if they’re not? Anyway, Voltron requires five pilots to form. There’s only maybe three of us.” Nobody missed the unspoken message, clear in the undertone of Shiro’s voice. At the cave, he hadn’t seen Voltron form. The lions hadn’t chosen him to pilot them- and with only two pilots, what could they do?

“We’ll make it work,” concluded Pidge, as the lion began to near the ground. They seemed to be approaching the entrance to a building the dimensions of a palace in width and depth. Surrounding it were other, smaller spikes, almost like claws in the way they bent at their tip. Its outer walls were constructed of a white metal that Hunk didn’t think he had seen before, and glowed with a blue light that reflected against the rocks of the cliff it was balanced upon. When they landed, they came into a white hall.

Hunk approached the door, thinking for a second that the lion wasn’t going to let them out, but then she growled, and it slid open, revealing a long, high arcade. Descending from the lion, they began to walk toward a set of stairs, slowly and carefully.

“If something happens,” Shiro was saying, “we run for the lion, okay? My crew was captured once… twice, and I am not letting that happen again. Not today.”  
Pidge and Hunk nodded quickly, sharing an apprehensive glance. In his hand, Shiro still held the gun from the shack, and Hunk wondered whether it would be of any use at all if aliens were to attack them now. He sincerely doubted it.

“Hold for identity scan.” The voice came from nowhere, catching all three of them by surprise, a Hunk turned his head this way and that, trying to see where it was coming from, while Pidge visibly jumped. A bullet from the gun ricocheted off of a wall.

“It’s a computer,” observed Pidge with a sigh of relief, the first of them to realise. “Your aim is terrible.”

“Trigger malfunctioned,” muttered Shiro, but a path was lighting up ahead of them, their identity seemingly decided and approved of.

“I guess we’re going that way,” Pidge said after a while, and they started a slow walk again, each of them checking behind every so often for any danger. 

Eventually, they came to a wide room, filled with panels and screens. It looked almost like a ship control room, except a lot larger, and, strangely, containing two pods, filled with people.

Or, Hunk thought with a further inspection, extremely humanoid unconscious aliens.

“Where are we?” Except it was too late to ask that, because one of the pods was coming open, the body inside shuddering. When it was fully open, she staggered out, looking ready to fall over at any point, eyes still closed shut. The alien girl was fairly tall, with dark skin and snow white hair. It was only really the markings on her face and her pointed ears that distinguished her as being anything other than human. Just as she was about to lose her step, Hunk caught her.

“Father!” Suddenly, her eyes opened wide, and she looked at Hunk in curiosity and surprise. “Who are you?”

“Hunk?”

“That sounded like a question. You’re a Galra spy! …what’s wrong with your ears?” Surprised, Hunk watched as she pulled on his eyes, expression confused.  
“Where is King Alfor? What are you doing in my castle?” 

“We were escaping from the Galra,” explained Pidge, and for the first time, the girl seemed to notice that there were other people here than just her and Hunk. Her brow furrowed, she inspected Pidge and Shiro thoroughly. Eventually, she voiced her concerns.

“Why would you come here?”

“A giant blue lion robot thing brought us.” Shiro gestured vaguely to the corridor behind them, from where they had come. “What’s your name? Why were you in that pod?” The alien girl looked distraught and anxious.

“How do you have the Blue Lion? What happened to its paladin? What are you doing here?”

“Our friends were taken by the Galra,” said Hunk. “Can you help us?”

“The Galra? I’m sorry, but your friends will surely be dead. There is nothing I can do to aid you.” A thought seemed to come to her head. “What year is it?”

“Dead?!”

“Surely they would keep them as hostages!”

“No. The Galra have killed everyone that they have taken, with no exceptions. I… I think they may have killed my father.” Downcast, her glazed eyes fixated on a computer screen. 

“I’ve been asleep for ten thousand years. By now, if they’re still around, as you say they are, they will run the entire galaxy- and your planet, if they know of it, will surely be next.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i love hunk i want to do a chapter called 'hunk alone' where it's just HIM hmu if you agree  
> jess you're pretty great too


	7. Cages

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i'm really sorry for not updating in such a long time! i know it's not an excuse, but i've had so many tests recently, and i was in a play last month, and there really has been no time. so please enjoy a chapter from the perspective of two different characters!

It seemed never to be a reasonable temperature in the Madrid base of the Natural Phenomenon Investigations Unit. During the day, the sweltering heat outside triggered the cooling system within the building, and to survive this period the agents of the PHI were required to wear coats. When the sun set and moonlight sparkled outside, this was when it was the warmest. Workers who dwelled there were constantly fighting to see who could obtain the thinnest sheets, the coolest pyjamas.

Matt, however, had no means with which to face the cycling climates. Day, night and day had passed, and still there he was, handcuffed to a table leg in a small room with a barred window. Although clearly it was meant to be used to conduct interviews, a small tape recorder placed on the table and a mirror that looked suspiciously double sided hung on the wall, Matt Holt had not had one word said to him by any member of the team since he had left that car.  
“Annabelle Fisher,” he remembered now, rubbing his hands together to try to conserve precious heat. “My job is to investigate alien activity. I do believe that you’re Matthew Holt, pilot of the Kerberos mission, not seen since its flight.”

A bell chimed, another hour gone. Matt had counted eighteen of those.

“If you just tell us a few little things, we can return you to your family, safe and sound,” she had said. “If you refuse to do this, you may be here for a little longer, I’m afraid.” Just a little longer- any longer than this, Matt thought, could drive him crazy. 

Maybe this was what his family had felt like, what Shiro had felt like, waiting that year without him. Somehow, he hoped, they had learned to cope, because if they hadn’t, and they were still looking for him, that meant that his actions, his mistakes had taken a whole year from their lives. That was too much to live with.  
Every fibre of him longed to feel their touch, their warmth, to hug Katie and ruffle her hair just like he used to, to wrestle with Shiro, to tell his mum everything and not be afraid of being judged. Yet here he was, in another country, on a different continent even, in a situation he had no idea how to get out of. When he breathed next, he could see the water vapour, frozen in the air. A clang of metal pulled him from his thoughts, resounding throughout the room with a reverberant echo. 

Matt shot up, feeling the cut of the cuff into his hand. His gaze moved toward the door, but there wasn’t a single sign of it opening, just as there hadn’t been for all of his time here. A glance to the mirror, another survey of the room.

Maybe he was hallucinating.

Weren’t there four bars on the window before? It was a mad thought, but with every passing millisecond he was becoming ever more sure of it. One of them had gone, just disappeared.

As he watched, it happened again. This time he saw the process- there was the flash of a hand, and a chain attached to one of the bars. After that, and he wasn’t sure what could have done it, there was somehow enough force created to pull off the window.

“Hello? Are you here to rescue me?” To be quite honest, Matt felt slightly silly to be calling out a window. For a few seconds, he doubted himself. Then his answer came.

“Yeah, one second, shut up.” The voice was female, young, and for a second he thought of his sister before he heard the thick Scottish accent laced in the words.

Another chain attached, another bar pulled off. Matt thought he could hear voices down the hall, and mentally willed the girl to hurry up.

“How fat are you?” 

“How is this a related question,” Matt whispered quickly, trying to keep his voice low.

“You’ll have to squeeze through this gap. I can’t be bothered pulling off the other. Even if you are fat.” The statement was apathetic and matter of fact. Wasn’t this girl meant to be saving him?

“I’m not fat,” Matt explained, growing frustrated, “but I am kind of handcuffed to a table. Is there any way you could help?”

“I hope you can catch.”

“What?”

A pair of pliers came toward him suddenly, and when he raised his hand to catch them, he found himself weighed down by the handcuffs, and missed. Instead, they smacked him directly in the face. 

Matt made no sound, thinking of the bruises he was going to have as he bent over to pick the tool up. As soon it was in his possession, he made use of it, cutting away at the metal off the cuffs. It took around a minute.

“Are you nearly done? Also. Don’t leave my pliers there. I want them back.” Sighing, Matt approached the window.

“Who are you? Why are you doing this?”

“You’ve been to space.”

“So?”

“Honestly? Just come on already.” He exited the room head first, planning to role when he hit the ground, but misjudged just how high up he would be. The girl was below him, balancing on the edge of a window ledge and carrying a large, open bag. Quickly, Matt grabbed the panel of the window.

“Woah.”

They must have been three floors up, but Matt couldn’t remember climbing it when he had first arrived; though, now he looked back on it, there had been a suspicious uphill slope of the floor, and a steadying lack of exits as they had made their way through the building. 

The positive side, of course, was that it sure was warm up here compared to inside.

“If you fall, I rescued you for no reason.”

Half of the girl’s body was her hair, it seemed to Matt at first glance. This was blue. If that wasn’t already striking enough, there was the fact that she may have been the shortest person he had even seen, and thinner even than his sister, maybe. At least as thin as Matt himself used to be. At most, she was around thirteen; on the lower end of the scale, she may even have been able to pass for eleven. 

“Come on,” she said simply, and descended as if it were second nature. Baffled and yet hopeful, Matt followed.

-*-

“I’m sorry, you know,” Lance said suddenly, shocking Keith out of a depressive stupor that may have lasted minutes or hours. For a moment, he thought he hadn’t heard correctly.

“You? Sorry? I dragged you into this entire thing!”

“No you didn’t. I forced my way into it and I followed you to the lions! If I hadn’t been here, then you would have been able to get off of this ship safely, and you wouldn’t be about to- well. You know.”

Keith did know, but the situation didn’t seem as imminent as it was when they’d talked about it an hour ago. It was as if he’d stored the information straight in the back of his mind and refused to look at it since. When the words ‘you’re going to die’ ran through his head they seemed less like a definite statement and more like a series of unrelated words that somehow, in some galaxy, applied to him. It was strange: he almost felt although he was floating and yet connected to the ground at the same time, never too far away.

A laugh threatened to escape, but he shook his head and focused on Lance’s words.

“Don’t blame yourself. It was my stupid plan to try to rescue Matt in the first place, and you only followed me because I wasn’t careful enough. I’m sorry. But when I saw you weren’t back at the lion, I wasn’t just going to leave you to die.”

Lance was staring at him, the lines in his face a cross between worry and awe. For a brief moment, their eyes met, and then Keith glanced away, looking at the floor instead.

For a moment, there was silence.

“I forgive you,” whispered Lance.

Somewhere inside Keith, a fire spiked.

“…and I’m not going to shoot you. We can’t act like you’re about to die! That’s ridiculous. We’ve been wallowing in self pity, you’ve probably mentally stamped your last will and testament; there must be something we can do! In the middle of that arena, there’s a gun, and I know you’re pretty much blind, but my name is figuratively- wait which one is it?”

“Literally?”

“My name is literally written on it! Who’s to say I can’t pick it up and hey presto, pew pew pew, aliens get deaded?!”

In the distance, far away, Lance’s childhood English teachers were saying their last goodbyes to their families before finally suffocating themselves in a pile of Shakespearian literature.

Keith almost felt the tug of a smile, but held himself back. He could see too many flaws.

“You’re assuming they won’t carry guns and kill us both.” Lance’s mouth opened and then closed.

“I may have been.”

“Even if we get out-“

“-I have been thinking about this, you know! I’m sure you said at some point that you’d been feeling some kind of energy, right?”

“Did I?” Any energy Keith had felt had long since dissipated.

“Yes! Back in the other cell!”

“This kind of feels like we’re straying off topic.”

“Where did you feel it?”

“What?!”

“In your body!”

Keith thought for a moment, looking upwards as he did so, face contemplative. Everywhere, he thought, but knew that wasn’t the truth. It hadn’t been a mental energy, he knew that at least. It was physical, penetrating, unlike anything else.

The only thing he could possibly compare it to was when they had met the blue lion.

Suddenly, Keith’s eyes widened, and he jumped up.

“You think it was a lion?! On the ship?”

“It’s a hunch!”

“If we can get to that-“

“-then we can fly out of here and find the others-“

“-and be on the way to forming Voltron!” 

Lance was an absolute genius, and Keith, for all those years at the Garrison, had just ignored him. Now, he wondered how that could have been. Suddenly hopeful, he tried to think through every possible method they could reach the lion.

Keith realised that until then, forming Voltron hadn’t even been a recognised goal.

“If we get out of here it was totally me,” grinned Lance. It was certainly possible now, but for the moment Keith tried to ignore Lance’s overconfidence, laughing only slightly.

“The first thing we need to do,” he said, “is find out where the lion is.”

“Well that’s easy! You can sense it. Just… track it with your mind!”

“Sounds like a good plan if I could still feel it, which I can’t.” At that, Lance’s face dropped, and Keith almost felt guilty.

“You don’t think they moved it?”

“I hope not... but I guess it could be a possibility.” Keith could see the light in Lance’s eyes fading, and for a second he panicked. “Or. It could be sleeping? Maybe it just doesn’t like me.”

“Does anyone?”

For that, Keith actually walked across the room and hit him.

“Ouch! Guess you’re right. I think you should try meditating.”

“Like some kind of monk? Is that what you think I am?”

“Nah, I’m Aang. You’re Prince Zuko. Or would I be Sokka? Hey Keith, could you imagine Pidge as Aang?”

Keith could quite honestly say that he had no idea what Lance was talking about.

“I’ll try your meditation thing if you stop confusing me.”

“Definitely a Zuko.”

Another hit, and Lance shut up. When Keith shut his eyes, he thought he could feel the tiniest speck of energy, maybe not the closest to them, but certainly somewhere. For the first time since they’d been kidnapped, he thought he might even see Shiro again.


	8. Intermolecular

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> lance and keith have to fight to the death : )

Lance, not narcissistically at all, thought that this may have been the best plan he’d ever come up with.

“It probably is,” Keith had said, “considering your last plan was to put a hovercraft on autopilot and just let it fly you into the desert.” 

Lance had, of course, ignored this. Although Keith was being his usual annoying, sarcastic self, it was clear that he was listening, and that he appreciated Lance’s skills in the art of alien ship escaping escapades. The plan was simple really, and only relied on one thing- that alien camera technology was loosely similar to that on Earth. Oh, and that other thing.

“It’s easy.”

“If Galra culture isn’t like that, we’re screwed.”

“At least they gave me the gun Keith. You can’t aim for shit. Now take your clothes off!” To be fair, Keith had a good point, and Lance was worried, but he thought he could cover it up in the arena, if not to Keith.

The water that trickled down from a crack in the ceiling motivated him, as did the memory of his family’s faces. Faces could fade in indefinitely long alien captivity, and the thought of that resolved any anxiety he had had.

He could do this. They could do this.

When the bars leading into the arena slid apart, Lance was more prepared than he had ever been for anything.

The crowd roared as both boys made their way into the centre of the great hall, Lance holding onto Keith’s shoulder and hobbling forward slowly. Keeping his head down, Lance surveyed each member of the audience, looking for the bright colours he knew would likely indicate royalty. He found these to his left, sitting in a box ahead of the rest of the onlookers; somehow, it reminded Lance of Game of Thrones (thinking about it, he needed to watch the rest of that)- there was the same kind of hierarchal system going on here, there was a separation between what he supposed were the peasants and the rich.

Somehow, despite the ever growing pain he could feel reverberating through his leg, a grin crept onto Lance’s face.

“Don’t count your eggs yet,” Keith whispered, and stopped walking. They had reached their destination- the two weapons in the centre of the hall that had been awaiting them for days, the ones that had haunted his fretful sleep the night before. Trembling, he held his grin.

“Eggs, Keith? You going to lay one?”

Looking at him sideways, Keith frowned.

“You’re honestly the weirdest person I’ve ever met.” 

Lance could see it in the way Keith stood; he was anxious, paranoid, ready for attack. It was odd how much his feelings showed through only his physical stance, and even odder that Lance had only just noticed. Did Keith think he was unreadable? No, it wasn’t that. Keith was hiding his fear from himself, just as Lance was. Maybe they weren’t so similar after all, maybe Keith wasn’t invincible. 

Maybe, Lance hoped, he was as convincing as Keith. 

As Lance’s smile got wider, Keith rolled his eyes.

“…good luck, okay?” These were Keith’s parting words, and at this he picked up his weapon and moved away.

During their short exchange, Lance had almost forgotten about the crowd, but now a voice cut through, resounding about the hall from speakers mounted high on the walls that surrounded them. 

“Pick up your weapons, and move to opposite walls.” The voice was strong, and its speaker stood in the royal box, fully dressed in a red armour with a glowing breastplate. Slowly, Lance reached down, careful not to irritate his leg too much, and picked up what he was coming to think of as his gun, shoving the cartridges for in into his pocket as he did so. Despite the thought, it felt unnatural in his hands- it was too big and clunky- but he could see the trigger, and he thought he could aim it well enough to kill if it was needed. 

Stumbling back against the nearest wall, Lance watched Keith on the other side of the arena, and measured how far away he was mentally, knowing he’d need it later.

“I am Zarkon, leader of the Galra Empire and conqueror of galaxies. I would have you know that I am filming this battle and that I will broadcast it all across the galaxy. Your friends who were here before will certainly see it, and come running to rescue the one of you that survives. I assume you understand the rules. This is a fight to the death. If the both of you refuse to participate, then you will be slowly tortured to death and we will force you to give up all you know. This will, of course, also be recorded.”

Lance breathed in and out slowly. ‘My leg doesn’t hurt’, he thought to himself repeatedly, so many times that even if he wasn’t convinced, he couldn’t imagine the words ever making sense again. 

“I’ll give you one chance to surrender, and if you do the both of you will live as paid servants of the Galra Empire.” From the other side of the arena, Keith scoffed. “Where are the other lions of Voltron being kept?”

“Eat a dick, Zerken… or whatever your ridiculous name is!” Somehow managing to still carry a gun, and fairly proud of himself for the feat, Lance stuck both middle fingers up and the same time. Later, he would wonder how, and exactly how effective it looked. 

“If you think we’re telling you anything, you’re a-“ Keith looked puzzled, and a few moments passed before he thought of how to end the phrase. Lance felt bad for him. “-stupid alien?”

“…yeah!”

Up above, the tall alien turned around.

“It was your choice. Begin.”

Immediately, both Lance and Keith sprang into action, intending to make this look as realistic as possible, just as they had planned. A check, the gun had plenty of bullets, as, Lance thought, machine guns often do, but it was worth the time it gave them. Already, Keith was dodging his way toward him, as if moving to avoid the shots he knew that Lance wouldn’t fire.

Aiming slightly to the left of Keith, Lance pulled the trigger, watching as the bullets narrowly missed. Keith was getting closer now, so Lance shuffled around the outside of the circle, aiming at where Keith’s next steps would be. He stayed back; the crowd was fairly entertained, but some shouted for blood.

Soon, they would get it. 

Suddenly, Keith reached out, pulling Lance toward him, and when they met both spun round as to face the audience. Lance pointed his gun toward Zarkon, and held it as steady as he was able. Exclamations of surprise and horror were heard from the aliens all around, but when their leader waved his hand, quiet spread across the room.

“Thanks for pointing out to us exactly which one was your leader. We were debating what you’d look like for a while. Lance thought you’d be the fattest, like a queen bee.”

“I did not!”

“Be quiet! What is the meaning of this? Shooting me would only lead to your deaths.” The alien looked disappointed, almost. How many of these fights had he watched in the past?

“That’s why I’m not going to shoot you, on my conditions of course.” Lance stared into the alien’s eyes, speaking slowly and confidently now, somehow getting into the pace of this. “Keith and I want to be escorted out of here by you alone, to a ship we can pilot back to our planet. Now.”

As Zarkon began to laugh, Lance grounded himself with the gentle breaths of Keith; he could feel the other boy’s back moving slowly forward and backward against his. 

“You think we haven’t prepared for a situation like this?”

Then everything stopped, or time seemed insignificant. A loud explosion shook its way through Lance’s body, leaving him reeling, and the heat was extraordinary. The pain he expected, though,   
never came, and by the time he realised why he was panicking so much (where were those calming breaths?), his thoughts were being underlined by Keith’s screams at every syllable.

Without so much as turning around, Lance took his shot.

The mortal fear in Zarkon’s eyes was the last thing Lance saw before the lights went out, and then he was grabbing Keith and they were running, and Lance didn’t know how but eventually the alien voices were dying down and it was getting lighter and now he could see the masses of blood, red as the last traces of a sunset.

At least two of Keith’s fingers were missing, he noticed when the light got even brighter. The result was horrific- bones sticking out where functional appendages used to be, with bits of muscle still attached.

Somehow he turned around and kept running, kept going, taking them in the direction his feet wanted without ever consulting his mind.

Eventually, Keith stopped running, and Lance turned around, fully expecting him to have died right there and then, standing upright.

“You’re going the wrong way.” The whole of Keith’s lower arm was burned, his sleeve singed up to the elbow. Lance tried to draw himself away from the sight. “Lance. It’s to the right… if we stay still any longer I think I might fall over, okay? So we have to move.”

Finally, Lance nodded, and they started moving again, heading toward where Keith could sense the lion. What seemed like hours later, they finally got there, what must have been at least a kilometre-long trail of blood following them. 

“Guess the whole clothes sharing thing was for nothing,” Keith said, looking back at it, bizarrely, Lance thought, both physically and metaphorically.

Their plan had been simple- to threaten Zarkon, shoot out the lights in the commotion that followed, and escape undetected by cameras using Keith’s camouflage outfit which both of them had managed to share to cover most of their bodies.

“We didn’t count on an exploding dagger,” Lance reflected. If they escaped now, though, they had certainly fared well on the luck they had, and that’s what both Lance and Keith were counting on.

They were still moving, and now they could see the lion. It was much like the Lance’s- only the colour and its weapons were different, but somehow, to him, it felt different too. Distant, and cold. Keith looked like he was feeling the same thing.

The force field around the lion stood strong, even when Keith knocked on it with his good hand. Quickly, he changed tactics, but shouting at it didn’t work either. Lance started to get paranoid, looking back at the door to see if anyone could here.

“It’s me. Keith. I’m your paaaaal-aaaa-diiiin.”

“Making your vowels longer won’t do anything!”

“What do you suggest?!”

All of a sudden Lance knew exactly what the solution would be. 

Eventually, if overcome with an opposing, stronger force, any objects break down.

Right?

“You’re not going to like it.”

Lance had never been any good with the physics aspect of flying, but what he was good at, for sure, was kissing. Giving Keith no time to say anything, he pushed toward him, grasping both sides of his face gently and concentrating all his energy into his mouth. The kiss was quick, but it was passionate, and when Lance broke it, the force field was down and the lion’s mouth open.

“Quick!” For the final time, Lance took Keith’s hand in his, and ran into the lion. The last thing they heard before the doors closed was the shots beneath them, but even in the peace and quiet of the ship, Lance didn’t think it was over yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shoutout to absolutely anyone who is reading this, ily


	9. Promises and Lies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> matt's in scotland, keith's pining and lance is a liar

“You know I’m fine with you having sleepovers Lili, you just have to tell me when and where! Don’t do that again, alright? I was worried sick.”

“Yeah, yeah. I was just at Angie’s, Mum.” 

“I know you were, but for all I knew you could have been anywhere! Now go play in the tree house while I call the bank and try to figure out where that two hundred went. I’ll bring up drinks in a bit. Can you believe someone got our details?”

“Thanks.” Not wanting to stay for any longer anyway, Lili practically ran back outside, ready to start her work for the day. What her mother called ‘play’ was more than she could ever imagine- this was their breakthrough, this was their ticket to fame. Finally, after years of monitoring and scanning and digging and God even knew what else, they had found what they were looking for.

Alien life.

Well, kind of, at least. 

The man wasn’t an alien, but he had sure met some, and you could tell he was different just by looking at him. Where there should have been one of his eyes, there was just metal welded to his skin, an unmoving, unblinking light at its centre. Lili had had to hide that on the plane home from Madrid, but it was fairly manageable. All the way to Glasgow airport, he had slept, as he did, after a brief waking period, on the bus back to her house. 

At first, he hadn’t wanted to talk to her, but eventually he had told her his name, Matt, and that he was from Atlanta in the US.

When she had woken him up as the plane landed, he had grabbed her throat and pinned her to her seat, demanding to see his family again, asking who she was. Thankfully, nobody had seen, but the marks left on her neck meant she was wearing a turtleneck today.

It didn’t matter, though. Once they had interviewed him, she had promised, he could go home.

“I’m back,” Lili announced, climbing through the treehouse’s entrance. Sat inside were Angie, Luke and of course Matt, who looked large and yet somehow lost at the same time in his surroundings. Angie was tweaking with the activity meter, its sensors attached to Matt’s head.

“What are you doing, Angie?” The other girl suddenly looked guilty, removing the sensors and putting them behind her back.

“I was just checking whether being out there in space for so long turned him into an alien! …it didn’t.”

“Of course it didn’t.” 

Angie had always been the one with the least common sense, but she was also the best with technology. It was her who had invented the activity meters they had, and these that had sensed the activity in space and the trajectory Matt’s ship was travelling at. Which, of course, had given Lili the time to fly to Madrid and rescue him from that other, richer alien club that had had him in their grasp.  
If it had cost her mother a few hundred pounds, at least it was worth it.

Matt sighed.

“You three are just kids. Thanks for getting me out of Spain and all but I need to go home now, my family hasn’t seen me for a year. I… I need to tell them what happened to Dad.”

A chill drifted in from outside, and Lili shivered involuntarily before crossing her arms and frowning. Next to her, Angie stood with her mouth open as if interrupted in the middle of speaking. Luke was the first person to say something.

Matt looked confused.

“What’s he doing with his hands?”

“It’s sign language, you idiot.” Somewhere in the background, Lili saw Luke roll his eyes. Angie was wringing her hands together, mouth still open, eyes darting to and away from Matt repeatedly. Finally, she spoke.

“He asked… he asked what happened to your dad?”

The question hung in the air for a while, and for most of that time it looked as though Matt would answer. Then he looked down to the floor and shut his remaining eye.

“You don’t want to know.”

“Kids, who’s this?” Lili’s mum was at the entrance to the treehouse, holding a tray with cans of lemonade and stacked drinking cups. Quickly, Lili grabbed it and smiled, putting it down on the table in the middle of the room.

“It’s Luke’s cousin! He’s from America, right Luke?”

To Lili’s relief, Matt had turned around as soon as her mother had entered, which avoided any questions about his eye. 

“Wow! Well… make sure you share your lemonade then.” After one more slightly worried glance at Matt’s back, she descended the treehouse stairs. They didn’t relax, however, until they’d all seen her go back into the house.

“Okay, Matt, we’ve got questions we need to ask you, and if you don’t answer then-“

“-then you’re not getting lemonade!” 

“Angie, shut up. Then you’re not going home.”

After that, Matt thought, the kids got a whole lot more serious. The clock on the wall marked two hours before the first break, and during that time they’d asked him just about everything he’d been asked in Madrid and more. What did the aliens look like? What did they do to him? How had he escaped? 

“Were there alien life forms on Kerberos?”

“What’s alien technology like?”

Eventually, Matt had stopped the questions and just told them everything he knew, his entire story. Why had he done it? To be completely honest, he wasn’t sure; it was barbaric, they were children and they didn’t need to share his troubles. Yet Shiro had always told him that when he talked about something it could only get better.

Shiro was always right.

“We didn’t crash on Kerberos, and the Garrison have known that since only a few weeks after our disappearance. Oh, you don’t know who that is? I guess you wouldn’t, they’re pretty secretive. They train teams of pilots and engineers from teenagers to be intergalactic explorers- I joined as an engineer back when I was fifteen. Should I tell you the story from there instead?” The kids all nodded. “Okay, I will then.”

“Although I joined as an engineer, I showed an aptitude for being a pilot too, which was pretty unheard of. I didn’t switch paths though, because I’d already been put on a team with a guy called Shiro, who became my closest friend. We were chosen for the Kerberos mission pretty earlier on, along with my dad who knows the inside and outside of a ship like the back of his hand. Years passed, and we trained pretty much every day, and we were all prepared for anything.

“Then Shiro had his accident. It was ridiculous, because he blamed himself, he always does. We were on a regular practice mission, just flying up, completing one orbit of the Earth and coming back down. Child’s play for any pilot like Shiro, but this time we got up there and every single control stopped working, and then the engines went out and we couldn’t keep the orbit up. Even with glide turned on, we crashed, thankfully in a desert.

“I was alright; Dad was okay too. Shiro lost an arm just five months before the Kerberos mission, and he wouldn’t speak to me after that. They say he went to live in the desert with some cousin of his.”

“You lost your pilot,” said Lili, as matter of fact as usual. Matt nodded.

“So what did you do?”

“I had to pilot the mission. I was scared, but I trained harder than I ever had for those months, and I did it. We landed safely on Kerberos, whatever the Garrison want to tell you about a crash. The thing is, we could have never prepared ourselves for what we found there. …aliens.”

“What colour were they?!”

“What elements were they made up of?”

“Luke says how big were they?”

“Purple, same height as us or a little taller, not sure about the elements. The one’s who captured me, at least. There’s a whole lot more species up there, some of who I met in captivity. Just as we were taking samples from Kerberos, we were ambushed and taken in by them. They knocked us unconscious, and by the time I woke up, Dad had been sent to a work camp and I was being prepared to fight in the arena.

“The first time I fought was when I lost my eye. It hurt so much, and I thought it was over, but then I felt something inside of me like… like the perfect combination of anger and joy. I decapitated their current champion, and in doing so became the new one. Since that day, I remain unconquered in the Galran arena. I don’t remember most of the fights, but sometimes I dream I’ve got my arms around somebody’s throat, and I’m just squeezing and squeezing, and when I wake up there’s nobody there.

“It took me months to infiltrate Galra command and get them to trust me, but that’s how I escaped. Not one person helped me but myself. I flew a ship back to Earth, and now here I am. You know the rest. I…I just want to go home.”  
-*-  
Keith thought this might be what death felt like.

Not in a bad way, even, just as in an afterlife way. Keith may not have been a Christian, but if he was, this was what he’d imagine paradise to be like. The perfect fighting machine in perfect harmony with his own commands and instincts, the constant explosions of lasers hitting the Galra ships behind him, the incredibly vast plain of nothing that was space, a place where nobody could be lost, or alone, or unloved.

The constant fretting of the blue eyed boy sat next to him, though, was definitely the highlight of it all.

“Keith, are you even listening to me? I knew you had a concussion! Your fingers are bleeding, and you could bleed out if I don’t bandage them up! Why are you smiling at me?!”

“You’re pretty when you’re worried.” Keith watched, giggling as the blush spread across Lance’s face, his mouth opening and closing as he tried to protest.

“You’re not thinking properly!”

“It was you who kissed me Lance, if I remember right.”

“That was physics! It was just so we could get through the lion’s barrier!”

“Yeah right, sure. You’re telling me you’re not gay?”

“Bisexual! Keith, we’re in danger, we shouldn’t be talking about this!” Behind them, a whole fleet of ships exploded, and another prepared to attack.

“We’re fine. Red’s got it in control.”

“Where are we even going?! Wait, that’s what you’re calling her? Maybe I could call my lion blue...”

“Nope, I’ve got the monopoly on the whole colour thing now. Also, quit changing the subject. We’re obviously headed for that wormhole right there.” Keith pointed to it, only half paying attention, before realising what he had said. “…oh no.”

“Turn us around!”

“I can’t, there’s alien ships behind us trying to kill us! …also it’s on autopilot!”

“Ugh,” Lance moaned, “autopilot, ancient destroyer of lives!” For a second, both of them were quiet, just kind of looking at what lay ahead of them. “…should we scream?”

“No, it’ll be fine.”

By the time they hit the wormhole, they were, however, both screaming, Lance covering his eyes and Keith trying all he could to pull them away. To their surprise, nothing happened, and they came out of the other side in one piece to see a planet whose defining feature seemed to be a large, white castle with several peaks.

“Wow,” they both gasped, and were silent as they flew towards it. Standing outside the castle were Hunk, Pidge, Shiro and two others. When Lance and Keith landed, they ran on to the ship, smiling, and hugged both of them.

“Lance! Are you okay?! Did you get shot?!”

“Yeah but I’m fine Hunk, Keith’s worse.”

Shiro was looking at Keith’s fingers and breathing heavily. At first, Keith thought he was having one of his flashbacks, but then he looked away.

“Those Galra, I’m going to kill all of them. Every last one.”

Pidge was hugging Keith now, saying something about how glad she was that he was safe, but Keith was looking over her shoulder at the people behind her. Frowning, he pulled away.

“Who are they?”

“You must be Keith! I’m Coran, and this is my niece, the Princess Allura of Altea. We’re here to help you form Voltron.” The man was fairly tall and had a large moustache. Clearly, he was alien- his skin tone was off, and there were tiny half-moons under his eyes- which made the fact he had an Australian accent just even weirder. How could an alien race in what was probably a far distant galaxy sound just the same as people did in an Earth continent?

“We understand you’re probably quite dazed right now, but you will be completely safe here.” The girl was speaking now, Princess Allura Keith remembered. “You’re out of Zarkon’s hand’s now.” All Keith could do was stare.

Why did she sound like she was from England? 

Allura was looking at him as if she wanted an answer.

“Okay,” he said.

“…we should probably continue this conversation after a trip to the infirmary.”

It turned out the Altean race had something called healing pods, which sped up the healing process and resulted in not only less scarring, but also a whole lot of rest, which Keith thought was well needed after an alien encounter, if not quite annoying. The only thing it couldn’t do was grow back the fingers he had lost.  
When Keith came out of the pod it was like falling back into reality; blinding light hit him from each direction, there was a cacophony of sound, and then someone was grabbing him.

“Keith, it’s me, Hunk. I’m so glad you’re okay! Let’s go and sit down.” Unable to do anything else and still acclimatising to his surroundings, Keith let Hunk set him down on a chair.

“Lance is already out of the pod too, he’s getting a shower right now. Do you want anything to eat? They only have this weird green goo here, but it’s okay if you get used to it. Do you want some?” It didn’t sound too appetising, but Keith was hungry (something he’d only just realised after not being fed for days), and willing to try anything to stop it.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“Great! Everyone’s asleep so when you’ve eaten you should probably sleep too. One second!” Hunk walked off into an adjoining room that Keith assumed was the kitchen, leaving him alone to look around. 

This was the castle they had landed on, but from the inside it looked more like a ship. Maybe it was. There was no clear expectation in his mind anymore for what a ship should look like, especially after finding two giant, mechanic lions.

Lions.

Lance had kissed him. Well, unless it was dream of course. Which was the most stupid explanation he had ever heard, and from his own mind, too; he knew it was true, could still feel the taste of it on his lips as if it had only been seconds ago. Lance McClain had kissed him.

After a few seconds of contemplating, Keith decided to never mention it again. 

“Here it is! Space goo, number one delicacy in the galaxy.” Hunk passed him a bowl filled with the most disgusting looking liquid he’d ever seen, along with a spoon, which Keith had to transfer to his left hand when he realised there was no way he’d be able to grip it with his right anymore. It was like some distant nightmare, something that wasn’t happening to him but some other Keith, far away. The most surreal thing about it all was how his fingers just ended. They should have been longer, it felt like they were longer.

“Pidge and I think we can make something to replace them. Your fingers, I mean. If you wouldn’t mind, of course. If it works out, we’re gonna try something on Shiro’s arm too.”

“Do Shiro’s first. It’s more important. I can cope like this for a while.” Keith knew he was lying, but he also knew Shiro had been going downhill recently. Sometimes he just caught him staring at where his arm used to be, concentrating as if almost trying to grow it back. Shiro needed this.

Keith would learn to hold a knife again.

“I’m going to sleep. Thanks for the food, Hunk.”

“Oh. Okay, good night. See you in the morning. If you’re sure you don’t want to see Lance before then?”

“I can wait.” Neither of them mentioned that he hadn’t eaten anything. “Wait. Where should I go?”

“Oh, yeah! I’ll show you.”

To get to his room, Keith had to walk past the shower rooms, it turned out. How did he know? Lance was singing love songs at the top of his voice. While Hunk chuckled and listened in, Keith only walked faster.

Keith had never seen him as a Taylor Swift person, but there were many things about Lance that were surprising him. How brave he’d been against the Galra. How smooth his hands were. The strawberry taste that laced his lips.

Shit. 

Needless to say, when Keith went to sleep that night he couldn’t get ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’ out of his head. He hoped it wasn’t an omen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i saw two door cinema club and fiddler on the roof this week. which do you think was better? open poll


	10. Resting Heartbeat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a twist!!!

The morning was a mess of more hugs, apologies and explanations. In only five minutes, Lance felt physically drained, and he hadn’t even talked to Keith yet.

At first, he was in the corner talking to Shiro, but when they sat down to talk, Lance expected him to greet him or say hello. Instead, he sat as far away from Lance as possible, with Shiro and Allura on the other side of the table.

Well, that was understandable. They had probably missed eachother. Lance tried to shake it off and actually listen to what the meeting was about.

“So what happened?”

“Pidge, it’s Allura’s meeting.”

“Thank you Hunk, but I would not personally call it that. Pidge, I’m sure we’ll get round to what happened eventually, first we need to-“

“Was Matt there?”

In the heat of the moment, they hadn’t even looked for him, and however much they’d had to get out of there, Lance was feeling pretty guilty about it now. At the same time, though, it reminded him that Shiro and Keith had been prepared to trade the blue lion in for him, and Pidge hadn’t done too much to stop him.

Keith had changed now he had a lion of his own. Had Shiro?

“We didn’t see him,” Keith was saying, “but we were pretty out of it for most of the time we were there. Sorry.”

“We’ll find him eventually,” comforted Hunk, patting Pidge’s back reassuringly.

“He’s probably dead,” muttered Shiro.

“Shiro-!”

“No, Keith. Thanks to me, you two nearly died as well.” Shiro looked at Lance and Keith in turn. “I just- I keep nearly getting people killed, and- I should go back to Earth. It’s dangerous to even have me here.”

“If Lance and Keith can survive Galra captivity, then so can Matt. Stop being so stupid, Shiro. You messed up, so what? You’re not going to do it again, and don’t you dare even say that again either. My brother is not dead.” Pidge said this so it was just louder than a whisper, but her words seemed to carry themselves through the whole room despite this. “Nobody is dead. Nobody.”

At the other end of the table, Lance was sure he caught Keith glancing down at where his fingers used to be. Then he made a fist and shoved his hand under the table quickly, looking away. 

If Matt could survive Galra captivity for a year, then he had to be a whole lot stronger than them.

“You’re right, Pidge. We’ll find your brother, but first we need to have the weapons capacity to do so. We unfortunately also have more pressing matters, if my judgement is correct. Coran?”

With a click of a button from Coran, holographic images appeared over the table. Planets, and at first Lance was prepared for some talk on alien culture or wormhole science but then he realised he recognised this. That was the Sun; there was Mercury, Venus, Earth. 

Were those satellites?

“I’d hazard a guess that you can identify the planet. The vehicles that surround it, however, are unfortunately Galra. They are preparing a full strike, which can take up to two weeks from my experience. What drew them there, I can’t say; it’s clear that none of the surrounding systems have yet been invaded.”

“It’s a real shame that this is happening so quickly, because you’re going to have to learn to form Voltron much quickly than has been common with past paladins.” Coran looked at them all. “Which means you’re going to have to find the remaining lions post haste!”

If this was a normal situation, Lance would laugh at the serious usage of the term ‘post haste’.

Instead, he was standing up and yelling.

“Did we do that?! Did we lead them there?”

“It can’t be certain, but-“

His youngest sister was six. What would she be doing on the day they were invaded? Playing with her dolls? Learning how to write? Wondering where he was to comfort her when they were being captured, enslaved?

By aliens.

This was unreal. Not for the first time, he wondered if this was some kind of coma dream. If it was, he hoped to wake up soon.

“We need to go stop them now. Keith and I have lions. We could tear those ships apart! Right, Keith?” 

Why was Keith just sat there? In fact, they all were. It dawned on him that Hunk had known about this last night when he’d came out of the pod last night.   
Suddenly, for the first time, he felt alone. 

“Hunk, you knew about this? …all of you knew?” Something dawned on him that should have been obvious. “Keith, you can’t have.” 

“Shiro told me earlier. Allura’s right, Voltron is far more powerful than any single lion alone, and we need that power to defeat a Galra fleet.”

“It’s not that we’re not doing anything, Lance. It’s that we’re preparing to do it so that nothing goes wrong. My brother’s down there, I know how you feel. My parents too. Pidge got into national news channels and the Garrison hasn’t put out anything on this. For now, everyone’s safe, and they’re not worried.” Hunk’s words reassured nobody, the tension was still present on the face of each one of them, including Coran and Allura.

“And what if they decide to attack early? Tomorrow? The day after?”

Allura took a deep breath in.

“We’ll open a worm hole, attack them with the castle itself. Coran calls it a suicide mission, but it’s all we’ve got. We will not let this attack proceed.”

Uncertain, Lance remained standing, looking at each of them. Keith had nothing to lose on Earth, and he had a feeling that Shiro didn’t either- why else move in with Keith, of all people, after the accident, become what was effectively a hermit? 

Hunk and Pidge had people though; families. 

Why was he so weak? It had been less than three days since they had left Earth, and already he was longing for television and capri-suns and stars that were just a little further away than they were out here. Distant, tiny, inconsequential dots- probably what the alien ships looked a lot like to those stargazing on Earth right now.

Biding their time and getting stronger had to be the best plan.

Lance sat down, which Allura clearly took as a sign she could proceed with the meeting.

“Okay, to begin, you two must tell us all that happened within your stay on the Galra ship. It’s paramount that we gather all information we can about them, as they appear to be our strongest enemies in the race to find Voltron. Lance? You were behind, Keith went to find you. What happened then?”

Lance told them the most hyperbolic, action packed version of their adventure, complete with voice acting and even impressions of both the Galra and Keith. Every so often, Keith would but in with sour comments and accusations that Lance was making it seem too romantic.

“I did not say that!”

“Yes you did! You called Zarkon a ‘stupid alien’. I mean, we’d been knocked around a bit, but I still can’t believe that was your best comeback…”

“Well I don’t remember it. Pretty sure I was concussed, so I wasn’t thinking straight. I’m sure your comebacks weren’t much better.” Lance laughed and listed a few that he’d thought of since the incident (that he really wished he’d said at the time) but a part of him wondered if Keith remembered any of it.

It didn’t matter, he guessed- it wasn’t like they had time for a relationship in this whole thing anyway- but it had also been pretty nice when Keith was teasing him about it. What was it that his abuela used to tell him?

“If it’s the idea of the thing you’re in love with, and not the thing itself, it won’t work out.”

Lance didn’t even know Keith, so he had no way of knowing whether he liked him or not. In fact, only three days ago, he’d thought of him as the enemy, a rival. If Keith has forgotten what happened, it was probably for the best.

They finished their story with how they’d found the red lion and escaped the ship through the wormhole. It turned out Allura had opened that when she’d seen the red lion’s activity on the ship’s radar, although at first they hadn’t been sure if they were expecting humans or Galra.

“Boy were we glad to see you two,” Hunk smiled, and Lance returned it shakily.

“For a while, we thought we weren’t going to make it back at all.”

“Yeah,” added Keith.

“Well, you did,” said Pidge happily. “Which is obviously great since we need five people to form Voltron.”

“I’ve been thinking about that. One of you must lead in the black lion, and right now it’s not clear who. If it were to be Lance or Keith, they would lose their bond with their current lions. As for the rest of you, you haven’t yet been in situations where a clear leader has emerged.”

“Shiro’s the oldest. He should lead.” Keith sounded almost accusatory, as if Allura not eyeing Shiro as the potential leader from the start had somehow offended him. Immediately, Allura looked uncomfortable.

“We’re not necessarily sure whether Shiro will be able to pilot a lion at all.”

Lance saw the anger begin to form on Keith’s expression and readied himself.

“What, because of his arm? Is that it? He landed Lance’s lion on the Galra ship, it’s not like he hasn’t flown before.” Shiro visibly flinched at that reminder.   
“Anyway, if I can fly a ship with my hand like this, so can he.” Another flinch, from the whole table this time, but despite the blunt way Keith had put it, Lance found himself agreeing with him. Every one of them looked to Allura.

“No, it’s not quite that.”

“Huh?”

“Why then?”

“But he saw the visions like the rest of us!”

Silence.

“Shiro, you, uh, saw the visions, right?” From the other side of the room, Keith’s eyes widened.

“Wait. I’d entirely forgotten about that- you didn’t see anything. Do you really think it means you won’t be able to be a part of Voltron?”

Shiro shrugged. “I guess we’ll just have to try. I can’t imagine a lion trusting me enough to let me pilot it after what I tried to do to the blue lion, though. If they were uncertain before, they’ll be even more so now.” A laugh came from him that seemed to echo through Lance. “Earth’s under attack and I’m useless in space.”

“That is not true,” said Allura firmly. “What you are is safe, at least for now. Should you not be able to pilot a lion, I will take up the role. Now, as for the task at hand.”

The three dimensional holographic Earth switched to a map with two distinct glowing points, each on separate planets. One was green, and the other yellow.  
“In order to fully establish which lion is best suited to each of you, we must first retrieve those that are not currently in our possession.”

Allura zoomed in on the green dot.

“Pidge and Keith, you will seek the green lion. I have sent its coordinates to red- it appears to be situated on a planet consisting primarily of rainforests, and should be fairly easy to find. If something goes wrong, Keith, you can communicate with the castle via your lion. That is, if you’re okay with going on a mission so soon after returning?”

“Yeah, I’m good.” Lance thought he saw Keith glance at him, but it might have been a trick of the light.

“You don’t have to go this soon, I could-“

“Shiro, I’ll be fine, honestly. If I need any help I’ve got my lion and Pidge.” 

“I’m actually trained in the ancient art of alchemy,” Pidge explained nonchalantly. “I’ll renkinjutsu any aliens that try to attack us.”

“Is that an Earth custom?”

“Perhaps it’s like our quintessence,” mused Coran, leaving Lance to wonder what both quintessence AND alchemy were, now. While, of course, also being confused about whatever Pidge was holding in her hand. 

“Is that a DVD?”

“I’m glad you asked, Lance. It’s actually what I like to call a ‘death disk’. It’s sharp, and it flies, and it could probably take off a few alien heads before Keith and I even see them.”

“How do you control it? Is it remote? Does it have an AI system? Voice command?” Unsurprisingly, Hunk enjoyed the new little machine, and was darting frantically from one side of Pidge to the next trying to get a good look at it and how it worked.

“I said. Alchemy.”

“Pidge!”

“Fine. Fully integrated artificial intelligence built in the same language as this ship and able to report back to it at any point. Accepts vocal commands in English, Spanish, German and Altean, and can also process both ASL and Auslan through its built in camera.”

“Ahhhh…” Drooling, Hunk held the machine in his hands, careful to mind the sharp edges. From what Lance had understood, it was pretty impressive.

They hadn’t been gone for long, and she’d already learned the language of the castle and applied it to something that would save lives. It was a weapon of a new order.

“German?” Keith was saying. 

“My grandma was German, I speak a little,” Pidge smiled proudly.

“Have you got more than one of those machines?” Everyone looked at Lance as though he’d sprouted a new head.

“Oh, well, yeah. I built them when I thought we’d have to go up against the Galra to rescue you, so… There’s a few.” Looking down, Pidge bit her lip. “A hundred, in fact.”

“That’s at least enough for one each, then.” With the whole team looking at him, Lance felt compelled to say more. “We’re going out into the depths of the universe, and most of its conquered by one race. Right? Shiro, Hunk and I will be going on a mission too, and we’ll be up against the Galra with one lion. I’ve seen what they do- we’re going to need these ‘murder DVDs’.”

An awkward space. Why did they all look surprised?

“Only if I can name mine Pepe, though.” 

“Pepe?!” Keith sighed dramatically.

“You never were good at maths, Lance.”

“Death disks! They’re called death disks!”

“They don’t even look that sharp.”

“Shiro, don’t touch it!”

Allura made Pidge and Shiro clear up the blood (a small amount) before their respective missions, her reasons being that if Pidge hadn’t made the thing nobody would have been drawn to feeling its sharp edges. The rest of the crew waited in the hangar.

Although Lance hadn’t been told where exactly what planet he’d be headed to, Coran assured him that his lion had the coordinates and the planet was both unpopulated and thoroughly safe. Pepe, of course, was in an abrasion-proof case in his pocket nonetheless.

As Keith walked into his lion, Lance traced the curves of his legs with his eyes and found the taste of home on his tongue. After all of this was too long, but now was too soon, especially for a kiss Keith didn’t remember.

They needed to talk, but there wasn’t much time for that in the midst of saving the world.

Shaking himself, Lance stood up and grinned at his rival.

“Hey, Keith!” 

Slowly, Keith span round to face him, the look of horror on his face almost comical.

“What?”

“When we get back, I have something to tell you. You’re not going to like it.”

With that, Lance turned around, walked into his lion, and shut the door, absolutely content in the fact that he was about to fly out into space. As long as he returned, that was.


	11. Blip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> keith and pidge retreive the green lion

There was something up with Keith.

Pidge couldn’t say there was something off exactly, as she’d only known him for a short while- she was incapable of judging what his ordinary was. Keith could be anyone under that ridiculous emo hair and those fingerless gloves, she understood that just fine. Thing is, falling over eight times in one mission wasn’t really in keeping with his image.

“Fucking move.” In front of her, Keith shoved a tree branch out of the way with the back of his arm, but in doing so missed another at his feet. Pidge had no time to warn him before he was on the floor again, sighing and restraining a scream that she could still hear.

‘Maybe you should ask him what it is,’ she thought to herself as she watched him closely. 

The mission had gone well so far, with Keith only nearly directing a death disk at the messenger who had greeted them (and then promptly left, taking his boat and forcing them to wade across a river), and there being no sign of enemy combatants in the vicinity, so it definitely wasn’t that.

There was a pretty long list of things she’d theorised that might have been bothering him, some being more likely than others:

One, the imminent invasion of Earth by armed Galra ships. This was a contender for the simple reason that it was so distressing, but Pidge quickly discounted it due to the fact that the whole team would be feeling the same about the incident, and the fact stood that Keith would probably be the least affected by a strike on Earth, having no family to lose on the planet.

Her second theory was that it had to do with the conversation with Allura, and the fact Shiro wasn’t being considered as a paladin, but that wasn’t really something somebody could direct their anger towards, since as far as Pidge could see nobody was to blame for it. Again, unlikely.

Other theories included home sickness, his fringe being too long, not liking the colour of his lion, and general depression.

In other words, Pidge knew the problem; she just didn’t know how to confront him about it. She guessed a try would be worth a try, at least.

“So, Keith. Did you hear I’m a girl? You weren’t there for the whole reveal I don’t think, being in Galra captivity and all.”

Turning around, Keith stared at her confusedly.

“You were pretending to be male? That convinced people?”

“Um. Yeah, the whole of the Galaxy Garrison.”

“Sure.”

Well, that conversation hadn’t gone in the right direction at all. Quick, Pidge, think.

“You knew Matt, right? Through Shiro?”

“Not really, I knew of him. I’m sorry me and- I’m sorry we didn’t find him.”

Had Keith just stopped talking mid-sentence due to a grammatical error, or was there something there?

“You and Lance?”

Keith stiffened; Pidge knew she had it. Something had happened between him and Lance while they’d been on the Galra ship, and it wasn’t anything that had been disclosed in Lance’s retelling of the story.

“L-Lance? Nothing’s going on with Lance. That’s ridiculous. Did you know that eight out of ten people say they’ve spotted a Spiderman-like figure scaling buildings in their city?”

“What?”

“What? Yeah, and wow, is that the green lion I see through those trees?”

Suddenly Keith sped up, leaving Pidge behind to roll her eyes at his back. It was official: men were idiots. You had to be blinder than Pidge herself to not see through that kind of cover up-

-although, he did have a point. 

There it was, in all its glory, the green lion. It looked just as the others had, but it was the way it felt that differentiated it; there was something inside that at first she labelled as a message, but with gestation it began to feel more like a calling, a tugging even. Her knees trembled and the shake in her hands felt obvious but when she bounded toward it she found herself straighter and more energetic than she’d ever been.

The barrier crumbled immediately.

Then suddenly she couldn’t see it anymore, only a pile of old, thick tree roots. It must be underneath, she thought. That’s what it was telling her.

“Pidge, what are you doing?”

So Keith hadn’t seen it.

“My lion, it’s buried in there. It called to me, Keith, you don’t understand, I know where it is and what it wants and that it’s mine. It’s mine.” When Pidge tore her gaze from her lion to glance at Keith, he was smiling amusedly. Of course he knew how it felt; it had been the lure of the red lion that had saved him and Lance from the Galra. Pidge couldn’t imagine being this close to something like this and unable to access it. It would drive her insane. 

“I’m going to go get it.”

“Go for it. I’ll look out.”

As fast as she could and grinning like an idiot Pidge sprang up the stack, each individual tree root sending a different pulse through her body. She longed for adventure, the outdoors. How she knew she wasn’t sure, but she had the sudden notion that power could only be found through nature itself, and that all things were intertwined just like the trees.

The lions formed Voltron, the species formed the food chains, the stars that shined even brighter from up here provided sustenance through light.

It was all so simple, so close-

(after, she’d wonder why everything was so dull and singed and grey, and how it had all gone wrong so quickly)

-but then Keith was yelling at her to get back down and she heard the loudest sound there could possibly be and her ears hurt and she was falling.

When she opened her eyes blearily, it was to Keith shaking her. He looked like he was talking- his lips were moving- but she couldn’t hear anything other than ringing deep within her ears.

“Pidge- not safe- Galra- have to move!” Keith’s eyes were wide with fear, blood coating the left side of his face from a cut just above his eyebrow. 

“My lion-“

“That’s what they want,” shouted Keith. “We need to get away before they land the ships.”

In glancing up at Keith, Pidge had noticed she was now at the bottom of the stack of trees, far away from the green lion. The pull toward it was duller now, as if it were letting her go, but every neuron in her brain still screamed that she should run to it, that it shouldn’t be the Galra’s, that they needed it to form Voltron and save Earth.

Head spinning, she stared at Keith’s outstretched hand for an eternity before taking it. Pidge understood now how Lance had felt when they had landed the blue lion on the Galra ship: incomplete and unspeakably angry. Against all her senses, it had to be done.

If she didn’t get away, there was no chance of her saving Matt.

As Keith pulled her up she shook her head, trying to clear out the white noise and get her bearings again. Looking around, the land was a ruin. Where they used to be a vast, fertile forest, now there was just dead soil, and the air felt cloaked with an ash she could feel in her throat as she breathed in.

Metres away from where she stood was a crater, the ground around it singed and still burning. Keith must have been close to where the bomb had detonated, but the only evidence was a burn on his arm where his suit had peeled away. Had the suits not been so resistant, they’d likely both be dead. 

Pidge considered this all in a second, because as soon and she’d looked around they were already running, far away from the destruction and chaos and back toward Keith’s lion. Strangely, now, Keith didn’t seem to be falling over so much- they were weaving in between the remaining trees much faster than they had on their approach, almost back at the river.

There was a cacophony above them, and although Pidge was doing everything in her power not to look up she knew that the shadow that had been cast around them suggested not just a small ship but one that could hold an army. When the second bomb dropped in a spot her feet had just left, Pidge was certain that this wasn’t just a strike on Voltron, but an invasion of the planet; for what purpose she didn’t know. 

As they approached the river, Pidge activated her bayard, grabbed Keith and aimed for the nearest tree on the opposite bank. In the time it had taken to fly here she’d had time to experiment with it, and was thankful she’d found a use for it. Incredibly, she’d aimed it right first try, and they flew across the water and out of the shadow of the ship, buying them precious time.

Using that time, she reached into her pocket and brought out the death disks- which was, frankly, a name she was regretting now.

“I should have based it off of something Latin. Or Greek, maybe. Made it sound less like what a metal band would call their greatest hits album.”

“Pidge, what are you stopping for? We need to get back, there’s no time for this!”

“Don’t worry,” said Pidge, “I’m coming,” and she let off thirty of the machines before she turned around and started running again, hoping too optimistically at least that they’d slow the Galra down, if not destroy them completely. They were programmed to self-destruct around any Galra technology if activated (which she had based off of what little Galra tech Coran had at the castle) but as they were small, they probably couldn’t fight the threat alone.

Thankfully, they were metres away from Keith’s lion, which opened up for them and set its engines going as soon as they reached it. 

“Get in, Pidge, quick!”

Pidge made for the entrance but hesitated as she saw Keith stop moving; instead, he was staring up at the sky as though transfixed by what was quickly becoming a large number of ships, a fleet even. The size of the army was disproportionate to even the sky, and where before she’d marvelled at the stars and planets in the vicinity, now the glimpses of them she could see behind miles of metal seemed harsh and foreboding.

Was that only a part of the Galra command?

Swallowing, Pidge tapped Keith on the shoulder.

“You too. We need to get out of here!”

“No,” Keith shook his head. “You’re leaving in red. I’m going back for your lion and saving this planet. The Galra aren’t here for the lion, Pidge.”

She couldn’t believe it. The whole day he’d been distracted, and now he thought he was ready to fight an army and strong enough to take them down.

But from the determination in his eyes she could see he was adamant: she wouldn’t be able to persuade him otherwise. Quickly, she clawed for another way to keep him from danger, but having already released the death disks, she had nothing but her bayard.

Keith was an idiot.

“If you’re going, I’m coming with you,” she tried. 

“You fell from ten feet up when the first bomb went off, you’d only slow me down.” Anger and fear peaked in her as Keith began to push her up the ramp. “I’ll meet you back at the castle.”

He was right, she was exhausted, injured and didn’t even have the energy to argue with him further, but this was a suicide mission.

“If you don’t come back, I’ll tell Lance you told me you hated him.” Voice cracking, she searched his face to see that she’d guessed right, and saw the surprise and understanding that were her confirmation.

“Don’t worry, I’ll just activate the lion and scare them off.”

-*-  
It had been a white lie, and it had been a transparent one too.

One lion couldn’t scare off an army as large as this one. Keith was going to activate it, but he wasn’t going to attack, that would be stupidity that would cost Voltron a lion and a paladin.

This way, they would only lose a paladin.

The words were still being broadcast over and over from the main ship, each time growing more powerful as it was amplified by the assembling fleet:

‘- aware of the location of the Castle of the Lions. Hand over the red paladin and we will not attack. Repeat- we are aware of the location-“

Normally, Keith would act on his instincts, and those would urge him to fight first and think second. This time? It wasn’t as if they weren’t operating correctly, but that they knew, just as every other part of him did, that an attack on the castle would put the whole team in danger.

That meant it would put Lance in danger. In the past few days, Lance had taken a bullet for him, helped him pilot his lion when injured, found the way to take down the red lion’s particle barrier.

To repay him, Keith had entirely ignored him back on the ship earlier, as if their kiss had never happened.

As if Keith hadn’t enjoyed it.

After thinking about it all morning, Keith had come to the conclusion that he owed Lance his life. Of course, he hadn’t envisioned giving it away today, but if that’s what it would take to protect the team then it had to be done.

Keith had tried not to think about how Pidge hadn’t heard the broadcast, because every time he did all the hints pointed to the fact that they weren’t going to kill him- and Keith’s fear of Galra prisons was one a lot more palpable than his fear of death.

“Keith?”

Oh. The communications device inside his helmet. Keith had forgotten about that.

“Are you still there? Are you near the green lion?” 

“Yeah, Allura. We’re, uh, just about to fly it back to the castle.” It was much harder to lie to Allura than it had been to lie to Pidge. Although he’d never really had much reverence for those in command of him, it didn’t feel good lying to a princess who trusted him to take revenge for the fall of her empire.

“That’s great! I was just on the line with Lance, who seems to be in the same position, despite a small problem that has been resolved. You haven’t encountered any enemies in the field?”

“No, everything’s great-“

“Allura, the Galra attacked. We’re both injured and Keith has gone back out there to try get the green lion and drive them away from the planet. We need a rescue team as soon as possible.”

So Pidge was on the line too. The fear in her voice was audible, and from her words he could tell she hadn’t flown back to the castle. Frustrated, he interrupted a confused Allura mid-sentence, talking fast as he saw foot soldiers approach from the trees across the clearing he’d ended up in. 

“Pidge, get out of here. Allura, use Shiro as the red paladin until you can find one. I know he didn’t see the visions back on Earth, but he’s focused and dedicated- I know he can do this.”

“Keith, what are you-“

“Tell Hunk and Coran that I never really got to know them, but Hunk’s food tastes amazing and Coran’s the best Altean advisor I’ve met-“

“-you’re talking like you’re going to-“

“-die. I am. From where I’m standing right now, there’s at least thirty soldiers approaching, Zarkon at their head. I’m outnumbered.” It was true. What Keith wasn’t going to tell them was that Zarkon’s weapon of choice was a long sword taller than him, and as piercing as the grin on his face. That, he’d rather ignore himself. “I’m sorry that I’m crippling Voltron by leaving, but even without me there’s six of you. You can make the most of that and defeat them.”

Not wanting to hear their protests and already feeling the sting of tears in his eyes, Keith pressed the mute button on his helmet. They’d still be able to hear him, which meant he couldn’t scream, but that was all for the better. If this was his last act, it would be one of defiance. Zarkon wouldn’t even be able to tell he was scared if Keith could control himself, and he would. Keith would be as brave as Lance, for once.

Lance.

“When you see Lance, tell him I remember everything. And that I’d do it all again right now if I could. If we ever meet again, I’m taking the first kiss, and I’m going to be proud of it.”

Fuck. Tears. He had to breathe.

“Tell him thank you.”

Inhale. Keith composed himself. Exhale, and he was walking toward Zarkon in just the way he’d walk through the desert back on Earth after collecting water. Calm, relaxed, ready, at least in appearance.

“I’m glad you saw the light, red paladin,” greeted the Galra leader, smiling viciously. “Do you have any last words?”

Keith looked Zarkon directly in the eyes and scoffed.

“If you think you’ve won, you’re wrong. You’ve had your rule for ten thousand years, and now the galaxy is turning against you. You can’t kill one soldier and win the war.” Keith had one last thing to do. With the last of his energy, he reached out to the green lion- it resisted him at first, but with its particle barrier already down and the planet in its current situation, he eventually convinced it to return to the castle alone. Now, he could at least die with the knowledge that all the lions were in their hands. 

“Kill me, but know we have enough people on our side that it won’t matter.”

“Is that it? Brave words for one who believes he is to die so young. Sendak, Haggar, hold his arms. It gets so messy when they move.”

As his arms were taken from both sides and he was held still, Keith whispered into his helmet’s microphone. By now, he hoped, Pidge would be on her way back to the castle, hopefully not too shaken and injured. She’d probably hung up when she realised he wasn’t answering. Would anyone hear his final sound? It didn’t matter, he supposed. Nothing mattered.

“I love you, Lance.”

Keith felt the sword as it went into his chest, and as it came out, but there wasn’t as much pain as he thought there would be, just darkness. It ate into his vision until all he could see through the tunnel left over was Zarkon, already giving orders to his army like Keith was already dead.

Then, just like that, it was over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah, i nearly cried writing this, i'm sorry


	12. New Mexico, Old Problems

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> so, you're all wondering if keith's alive...

Angie knew how Lili felt about credit card fraud.

“We live in a middle class suburb. My parents earn at least fifty thousand a year each, so they’re not going to miss the six hundred pounds it costs for a return ticket to Albuquerque. You know your mum’s credit card pin, just tell her you’re staying at mine; forward the money for your ticket into Luke’s account and we’ll take it out at the airport and ditch the card. Nobody will ever know.”

And she was right, of course: they’d made sure of it. Luke had got the card online and entered the details of a man who didn’t exist. They’d had it sent to an address three streets away that had been uninhabited for two months now, and yesterday Lili had broken in and taken the package with the card inside. This act would be completely untraceable, and their parents would never know.

“It’s not like we haven’t done something like this before. Remember Chepstow?”

The way Lili put it made it sound easy, but what she hadn’t factored in was the crippling guilt it would cost. Not to her of course- Angie had realised years ago that Lili didn’t have feelings in the sense most other people did, but she hadn’t yet made up her mind whether it was a good or bad thing. Luke, who was paying for this out of his own money, didn’t seem to share her worries either.

Matt was worried, but for all the wrong reasons.

“There’s no need for you to come with me. I can get home alone,” he tried for what must have been the fortieth time. To be fair to him, by now he wasn’t trying quite as hard as he had been before, probably because they were already at Glasgow airport’s cash machine.

“We know. We’re coming to see the Garrison.” 

Blowing a bubble with the gum they’d bought buying supplies, Luke slid his card into the machine, and took out the maximum amount of cash numerous times. Matt was glancing around nervously now, as if begging them to be seen. Out of the corner of her eye, Angie saw Lili grab him, and turn him away from the crowd. Luke was going as fast as possible, but this was one of the most dangerous parts of the whole trip. When they’d discussed the plan before, they’d wondered if it would be better to take out the cash from multiple locations, but decided if anything that would seem even more suspicious. However, if they didn’t move soon, they were going to start attracting people’s attention.

“Hey, Luke, you almost done?” Bad question. The glare he shot at her probably cost them at least a few seconds of time. Thankfully, after one more transaction, he did seem to be done, and moved away from the machine. The rest of them followed, letting out a collective breath of tension.

“Okay, Matt, you’re buying the tickets.” As Lili said this, she sat down outside a Costa coffee, pulling her sunglasses over her face and taking out a phone they’d bought with cash at the market in town. “I’m going to secure transportation for when we get to the airport. Luke, I’m going to need that card if we’re hiring a taxi.”

“Me? I’m-“

“The oldest? Yep.”

Matt’s mouth opened and then closed again, and his expression morphed into one of begrudging acquiescence. To be completely fair to him, he would have had an argument before they bought the eyepatch and his new clothes. Now, Angie thought, he just looked kind of like a redeemed pirate- which was to say, not an astronaut who had just returned to Earth after a year of alien capture. Which was to say, the least likely out of all of them to be denied tickets at an airport.

Lili handed over the money and Matt left for the nearest ticket booth, almost tripping over luggage in his way as he looked back at them, a look in his eye that seemed close to sadness. 

Angie didn’t know what to think of Matt.

“Do you think he’s clumsy or just not used to the Earth’s gravitational field strength?”

‘Option C: he’s a robot controlled by the aliens, but their version of WiFi can’t reach this far, so occasionally he stumbles,’ Luke signed, grinning as he got the credit card out of his pocket and handed it to Lili. Sometimes, Angie couldn’t tell whether he was joking.

“That actually seems fairly probable…”

“Option D: shut up, both of you. I’m trying to decide which taxi service to pick.”

‘I wasn’t talking.’

“Pick the cheapest. Or the second cheapest.” Wasn’t that the way people usually made decisions? At least, it was how her parents did. 

Suddenly, Angie found herself mentally listing every mechanism inside a car to distract herself. By the time she’d gone through every braking pad and commutator, Matt had returned with the tickets, and Lili had torn the credit card in half and flushed it down the toilet, and the transportation both to and from the Albuquerque airport to the Galaxy Garrison was booked.

Was it just her, or was this the most excited she had ever seen Lili look? 

If only she felt the same.

They got through security quickly, and before Angie knew it she won on the plane and heading for the United States. Before, she’d never been out of Europe, and now here she was, with what she considered her two closest friends and a man she’d never seen before this week, a man who could be anyone.

In the sixteen hours it took to reach their destination, it was all she could do to make sure that her regret didn’t propel itself into the realms of fear.

They took shifts in sitting next to Matt and keeping him awake, so that they each got around ten hours of sleep each, not accounting for their change in planes at JFK airport, which Luke seemed to sleep through the whole of. When it was Angie’s turn, she tried I Spy before turning to card games and then describing how she’d built the detector they’d used to find him. 

“Keep him awake,” Lili had said. She hadn’t said why, but from the fading marks on her neck Angie could guess. If she’d been through what Matt had, she was sure she’d have nightmares too. Forget things, just because you’d become so accustomed to forgetting as a coping method. On the plane, he seemed just as pleasant as he had been when recounting his story to them in the treehouse, but she could see the tiredness creeping into his face.

Either he knew what he had done to Lili, or he suspected it.

“It was Lili who got us into the whole alien thing. Three years ago, she was on holiday in Texas, visiting her grandparents there, I think. Maybe it was her godparents? Anyway, she found some kind of machinery on the beach. It was a three dimensional holographic map interface of a planet, and not ours. When she got home, she roped me and Luke into the whole thing, and we’ve been searching for alien activity since then.”

“So how did you build the tracking device?”

“The map. It was powered by some kind of crystal, and I integrated that into the remains of a satnav. At first we thought it hadn’t worked, because for three years there was nothing. Then we found you.”

Matt looked at her.

“Lili found Galra technology, on Earth? How is that possible?”

Angie hadn’t thought about that. Well, of course she had, originally, but not with the added contextual knowledge that the Galra were monsters.

Why would they visit, and not invade?

“I… I don’t know.”

By the time they reached Albuquerque, it was 9am in British Summer Time and 2am in Mountain Daylight time. Stepping out of the airport, it was like walking into another world; where Angie’s body had expected a chilly start to the day, it found the kind of pitch black humidity only a desert setting in the earliest hours of the morning could harbour. Immediately, she felt as if she were somewhere she didn’t belong.

“Our taxi should be here by now,” Lili was saying, glancing at her watch impatiently, but in the intervals between these looks, Angie could see from the way her hands fidgeted that she was thinking through every detail of their plan, reviewing it and changing it for every possible situation.

Back in the treehouse, before he’d known what Lili wanted to do, Matt had laid out to them the entire structure of the Garrison, its every entrance and weakness. By the sounds of it, in terms of building layout the hardest structure to traverse would be the main door. Each door only opened through key card activation, and these cards were only issued to the Garrison’s most trusted soldiers.

It was these soldiers that were their other main issue. According to Matt, they were trained to shoot any intruders on sight.

Lili had found a solution that combatted both these issues. Luke called it ‘the oldest trick in the book’, and Matt called it ‘dangerous, to say the least’. For that part of the plan, they were each equipped with porcelain knives, the only kind possible to smuggle through an airport metal detector. Hopefully, they wouldn’t have to use them.

In the car on the way to the Garrison, Angie could feel the knife in her shoe weighing heavier than it had for the entire plane journey. Outside, the light of the moon framed the city in the silhouettes of cacti, dull, rectangular buildings, the occasional car. Occurrences of anything other than sand, though, grew increasingly fewer as they drove away from the urban area and out into the barren wasteland Matt directed the driver into.

Other than these inputs by Matt as to where they were headed, nobody spoke.

It became clear to Angie, an hour into the trip, that they were driving past the same signs repeatedly. Suddenly, she understood why Luke had been looking confused for the past fifteen minutes, and why Lili kept glaring at Matt as if warning him.

Unfortunately, the last one to realise was the driver himself.

“I’m sure I’ve seen that house before! You sure you’re not messing with me, ginger?”

“I’m not ginger! I mean… stop the car!”

Shrugging and shaking his head, the driver hit the brakes, and the car slid to a halt. Leaning back, he flicked a switch on his monitor, and immediately the price on the screen went up by twenty dollars.

“Sort it out or get stranded in the desert. Man, I should have known not to take this one when I saw the kid had blue hair.” He reached down and took out a box of cigarettes and a lighter from the glove compartment, opened the door and left.

The air inside the car was stuffy, and the momentary silence combined with the darkness outside, just for the briefest second, made Angie feel like she was safe at home, bundled in covers and waiting for the bliss of sleep.

Lili said, “What do you think you’re doing, Matt?”

“You can’t infiltrate the Garrison. It’s dangerous. I’ll do it; I’ll take the car, I’ll drive the rest of the way. I’ll get the information for you, because I owe you that much at least, but I am not putting you into danger again.”

“And you decided that before or after we bought the tickets to get here?”

“I don’t know. To be honest, I’m not- I’m not processing things very well right know. I… I don’t remember the flight, or anything we did at the airport.”

“You’re having black outs, but you think it would be a good idea to single handedly infiltrate an intergalactic airbase patrolled by soldiers that would kill you in a second.” The passion in Lili’s eyes shocked Angie. “If you’re breaking in, you need us. We’ve been waiting for this, and you’re not taking it away from us now.”

“She’s right.” Unbelieving of what she was saying, Angie took a deep breath in. She was facing Lili and Matt now, and she thought she felt Luke tap her shoulder. He could wait. “I’m here now, and it’s two in the morning, and there was no point in coming unless we’re actually going to do something.” Behind her, there was banging on the windows, but just as she was about to turn to Luke, several things happened at once.

Lili drew the knife from her shoe and plunged it into Matt’s leg, and from the corner of her eye she could see the cigarette drop out of the driver’s mouth as he began to wave frantically. Sighing, Luke was scrambling over her toward the driver’s seat, and a feeling of dread rose in her stomach as the turned around to look out the window.

There was a car, and it was headed straight for them.

“You stabbed me!”

“See how you like it, staying while we go in.”

“Uh, guys.” Her eyes darted from the car, and back toward Lili and Matt, the driver, Luke. The key was still in the ignition, but every time he twisted it, the engine started and then died down. Now, the car was getting closer and closer, larger and larger, and they were running out of time.

“Angie, I thought you agreed with- oh, fuck.”

Finally, the engine started, but by then it was surely too late. Luke drove maybe a few metres before the cars collided, and then the explosion in Angie’s head was enough to make sure that nothing else was able to hold her concentration, at least for a while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah, keith is definitely dead. and it looks like matt might be too, now!


	13. Panic! In the Desert

“…back here? With a ton of kindergarteners, too.”

“What we need is to isolate him, and to run tests immediately. We can’t risk this kind of information getting into the public’s hands.”

“Are you sure we didn’t kill him?”

With every waking moment, Luke was becoming increasingly aware that these people, whoever they were, were the ones who had hit the car. He tried to stay still, but every time he thought about how loud he was breathing he panicked. His head was throbbing, and his eyes burned to be opened. What were they talking about? 

“He’s unconscious, but it doesn’t look too serious. It should make it easier to transport him back to New York.”

“Do it. Dispose of the children. Send them to an orphanage or put them on a plane; I don’t care. Whatever it takes to make sure they don’t spread the fact he’s here.”

Okay, so Matt was out, and it looked like Lili and Angie were too. That meant the only one who could do anything was Luke. Screaming wouldn’t be an option but sneaking a glance couldn’t kill him. If they were looking at Matt, they wouldn’t see. 

Keeping the rest of his body rigid, Luke snapped his eyes open, and light flooded in as water floods into a newly opened dam. For a second, the brightness dulled the individual shapes, but when he’d adjusted enough, he could see that the car was turned over on its side, his head against the window, and his hands still locked onto the steering wheel. 

Click, click. Someone was walking away from the car, someone in heels. If Luke was correct, there had been two people here before. So now there was only one. 

“It’s Cameron. We’ll be needing secure transportation back to the base, with enough room for a prisoner. Bring backup, and prepare for a hostile engagement. Over.” There was static, and then the clicking of a switch. Although the wing mirror was, unsurprisingly, scrap glass now, the rear mirror was intact, and looking at it Luke saw a man with dark black hair leaning over the seat next to him. Maybe thirty, he was tall and dressed in the kind of suit you’d see only at a wedding or the office of a millionaire, and his long, slender fingers were poking at the metal in Matt’s eye that was- in a way that looked so unnatural Luke almost had to look twice, split down the middle- blood pouring from its centre.

Cameron seemed to sense something was wrong, and Luke clamped his eyes shut as he, too, checked the mirror. 

It was too late; he’d already seen the beginnings of a smile work its way into the creases of the man’s face.

“Want to tell me what you thought you were doing with this guy, kid?” Opening his eyes again, Luke saw Cameron’s hand brush against Matt’s eye one more time before it shot forward to grab him. Quickly, he fumbled to move his body away, and whirled around, pressing his back against the pedals of the car. Grinning, Cameron loomed over him.

“I’m not going to hurt you. We’re just real concerned for your safety in a situation like this.”  
Then why was there a gun in his hand? Luke glared, and kicked him in the nose with all the power he could muster, darting forward and grabbing it. Or at least, trying to. This idiot’s grip was tight, but at least his other hand was occupied with shielding the car from the blood dripping from his nose.

“You little shit!” Cameron pulled the trigger, just as Luke bit down on his hand. Crying out, he let go, and the barrel of the gun turned toward the window, the bullet ricocheting off the glass and into his hip. Now, he was screaming in pain, furious.

Luke tried not to think about the fact he’d effectively just shot a man as he took the gun and brought it down on Cameron’s head. Instantly, the man crumpled, and Luke had to shift to make sure he didn’t crush him with his weight as he fell.

For a second, Luke didn’t move, panting heavily and staring at the gun. His hands were shaking. Suddenly, he couldn’t seem to lift its weight anymore, and it clattered to the floor, or the glass of the window, or wherever was down now.

Breathe in, breathe out. Don’t panic.

They could still get out of this.

Unless the woman who was here had heard anything. Unless she was walking over here right now, with the backup Cameron had called in, ready to kill or imprison them all. Unless-  
“Luke?”

As quickly as he had dropped it, Luke picked the gun back up and pointed it in the direction of the voice, eyes wide and heart barely beating. When all he saw was Lili staring back at him, confused and bleeding from a cut on her cheek, he clicked the safety back on as quickly as his fingers would let him.

“What’s happening? Is Angie okay? Did we get to the space station?”

Luke passed her the gun and she held it, her finger as far from the trigger as possible as she tried to process what was happening.

‘We got hit by a car, I don’t know who it was. Well, I do. It was this guy.’ Luke pointed to Cameron, who, slumped in a ball against the window, looked almost as if he could be asleep. ‘I-‘  
How should he put this?

‘I may have shot him.’

“You did what?”

It was strange. Luke didn’t feel bad about it, exactly, he just felt… different. As if he’d done something he shouldn’t have, and from now on everything he touched would be dirtied by it. Maybe Cameron was dead, maybe he wasn’t.

Did it matter? Right now, it didn't feel like it did.

“Okay. I think I get it. You need to stop looking so dazed, and we need to wake Matt and Angie up. Would the car still work if we tipped it back over?”

Luke hadn’t thought about that before.

‘I don’t know.’

“Then we need to try.” Lili made to get up and reached for the door handle, and for a second Luke let her. Then, suddenly, he remembered, and gasping, grabbed her arm and dragged her back down into the car.

Lili glared at him, and said “what?” slightly too loud for his liking. Luke put a finger to his mouth and motioned for her to keep her head down.

‘I forgot to tell you. This guy wasn’t alone. There was a woman with him, and there could be other people out there too.’

She seemed to get the message, and switched to sign language. ‘A woman? Interested in Matt, looks like some kind of spy, wears really high shoes?’

Luke shrugged. ‘I didn’t see her. You think she’s the one from Madrid?’

Lili nodded. 

“Hello? Cameron, do you copy? We have update on the alien fleet, I repeat update on the alien fleet. Pick up when you can, over.”

That was the radio. It lay impacted into the glass behind Cameron’s head, and now the message was repeating again. Quickly, Luke grabbed it. 

‘Alien fleet? Do you think that’s something to do with Matt?’ 

Shaking her head, Lili took the radio from him and held her finger over the receiver.

With one hand, she signed: ‘we have to answer, or they’ll know something’s wrong.’ 

‘What are you looking at me for?’

Lili glared at him, but he could tell it was only half hearted. Then she coughed and held down the button that she knew from experience would transmit her words. Her experience, however, did not reach to the point of doing impersonations of people she’d never heard speak. She almost managed to keep the Scottish twinge from her voice, but in Luke’s opinion it was still dangerously high pitched.

“Just making sure we have the children on lockdown. Where are you? …over.”

For a second, there was only static on the other end of the line, and in that second a thousand ways he could be killed played through Luke’s head. These people, whoever they were, seemed like trained soldiers. Maybe he’d die from starvation and torture and pure fear, or maybe it’d be quick. A firing squad. A single bullet to the head. 

“Copy that. Squad is located parallel to the main vehicle, ready to approach for extraction. Over.”  
Lili didn’t reply to that, choosing instead only to exhale.

“We have time then, but we don’t have long,” she whispered. “You wake Angie up, I’ll wake Matt.”

‘But I’m closer to-‘

“Luke, do as I say.”  
-*-  
Lili regretted waking Matt.

“Are you okay?” He asked her for what must have been the eighteenth time. To tell the truth, she was pretty shaken. First, she’d been knocked out in a car crash in the middle of a desert thousands of miles from home, then she’d found out that a crazy alien society wanted to kidnap them.

Clutching a neck littered with new bruises, her voice grated as she spoke.

“I’m fine. It’s Angie we need to worry about.” Somehow, she managed to keep her voice from shaking, even with the rest of her body locked in a state of stammer. Lili had to be the strong one, because due to her stupidity, Matt was injured, Luke was traumatised and probably concussed, and Angie…

Well, Angie wasn’t waking up. They’d tried shaking her, prodding her, rousing her with the loudest whispers they dared. No response. Lili hated to think what that meant in the long term, but for now it meant that the Garrison plan was over. Plan two involved getting away from here before anyone came to check on Cameron, and going straight to a hospital.

The first part of that plan involved turning the car over.

“So we push it over, get back in, and I’ll make a run for the driver’s seat.”

“How long has it been since you drove?”

“I’ll get it.”

‘Where’d the taxi driver go anyway?’

“Who cares, Luke? Me and you are getting Angie back into the car, okay? As soon as it’s turned over.” She dreaded to even contemplate what would happen if the car wouldn’t switch on. Right now, they were behind the toppled taxi, having climbed out of the top of it. The soldiers were at the other side of it, around two hundred metres away. It was a miracle they hadn’t seen them already, and they would definitely hear them overturn the vehicle in a moment. 

So if it didn’t start, they were dead, and if it did, there was a good chance they’d be caught and killed anyway. Lili almost wished she was at home with her mother. For once, that was the better option.

For some reason, she’d been fine sacrificing herself when she’d broken into the office back in Spain, but when it came to her friends being put in harm’s way she felt queasy. Man, feelings were weird.

“What about this guy,” Matt asked, pointing at Cameron. Luke shuddered. 

“Obviously, we leave him.” Luke’s eyes were glued to Cameron’s chest, and Lili knew why. When they’d carried him out of the car he’d been hauntingly cold and still. There was no rhythmic rise and fall of his carriage, no colour in his cheeks. None of them had said it, but it was clear that Luke had, inadvertently, murdered Cameron. Lili wanted to tell him it was alright, that it wasn’t his fault. “That woman will get him help,” she said instead. “You guys ready.”

Matt nodded, limping forward toward the car. After a long moment, and several deep breaths, Luke did the same.

“One. Two.”

“Wait, what direction am I driving in?”

“Whichever!” Lili sighed. Matt reminded her of Angie, and thinking of Angie reminded her of how bleak their situation was. Odds on living? About two percent likely. She’d love to say she’d faced worse. “…three.”

As they drove away from the shouting and the guns, Lili peeked into the rear mirror. Underneath where the car had been, squashed and broken, a mass of blood and bruises, was the taxi driver. When she saw him move, like a fly who's just been swatted and hasn't yet realised they're dead, she almost puked.

Five hours later, she was in space.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AAAAAAAAAA i'm back!!!!!!!!!!!!!1  
> lmao list of things i gone did done during this hiatus:  
> -went on holiday at least once  
> -ate a man  
> -learned how to drive
> 
> list of things i could have done:  
> -had a child  
> -named them keith  
> -ate them
> 
> love y'all

**Author's Note:**

> if you enjoyed this, please comment or give kudos! it's my first work for the fandom, so i'd really enjoy some constructive criticism too! thank you for reading, stick around if you want to know what happens next.  
> also, my tumblr is @jessandzola, message me! i follow back


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